Police Forces ‘Need To Do More’ To Tackle UK Cybercrime

The UK’s police forces have been urged to build and develop closer working relationships with the country’s technology industry in order to tackle the ever-growing threat of cybercrime.

A report from industry watchdog techUK has shown that there is a worrying gap in co-operation between the two areas, which it says now need to work together to raise standards of reporting, recording and responding to this growing threat.

The call comes after it was revealed last week that cybercrime offences, including online fraud, are now the UK’s most common forms of criminal activity, after they were included in official policing figures for the first time.

Challenges

techUK carried of FOI requests to all 43 UK police forces to construct its report, and found that around half could not supply accurate figures of cyber-crime reports without manually analysing every crime in their recording systems.

“This report highlights the challenges that cyber-crime represents for policing,” said Adrian Leppard, Commissioner of the City of London Police.

“Within the context of shrinking public sector sources there is clearly the opportunity for private sector technology firms to work in closer partnerships with the Police to tackle the threat posed by cyber-crime. Creating structures that work nationally to facilitate this will be challenging but we should wrestle with these issues as the threats we face are significant. Just as technological innovation helped the public and police win the battle against other crime types it has great potential to assist law enforcement in investigating and designing out cyber-crime.

“It’s by working together we can share expertise and knowledge toward the collective goal of making the UK a more hostile place to commit cyber-crime.”

Co-operation

Moving forward, techUK is calling for much closer co-operation between police and the cyber security industry to improve skills and awareness across the UK.

As well as highlighting the need for increased funding for law enforcement forces to tackle cyber-crime, it is also asking for the creation of joint police and industry working groups to help share cyber threat information in real time, creating dynamic investigative capabilities within key business sectors.

The group also wants a joined up approach to Victim Support between consumer groups, the technology industry, policing leads and Victim Support across the country, and the establishment of a Managed Service Provider model (MSP) to help the police contract the specialist cyber skills that they need.

“Digital technology is revolutionising the way criminals operate. Police forces have made a number of positive steps to meet the challenge in recent years but they cannot meet it on their own,” said James Murphy, techUK’s associate director of defence and security.

“The ability to effectively tackle cyber-crime remains the collaborative responsibility of civil society as a whole, including businesses, consumers and the technology industry. It’s only by working in partnership with the cyber security industry that the police can access the skills, capacity and reach that they desperately need.”

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