Head Of PCeU British Cyber Police To Quit Force

The chief of the Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU), the division of the Metropolitan Police dealing with national digital threats, is to leave the force ahead of a major shake up of British cyber policing, TechWeekEurope has learned.

Detective Superintendent Charlie McMurdie, who helped set up PCeU in 2008, told TechWeekEurope she had chosen not to stay with the force ahead of its merger with the cyber arm of the Serious Organised Crime Agency into the National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU).

The NCCU will be formally established in October. TechWeek recently reported on the rush to get the organisation together and the patchy state of cyber policing across the UK it hopes to address. It now has an interim leader, but much is left to do before the launch in five months.

A ‘good time to go’

“Now was a good time to go. There’s a lot of changes taking place, a significant part of the PCeU is being consumed into the new agency,” she said.

“We’re looking at revamping and doing a Met ‘cyber build’ and it is kind of déjà vu, having started PCeU four years ago.”

Asked whether she had considered a move into the NCCU, McMurdie said: “That’s not going to happen. I won’t say anything more on that.”

McMurdie has plenty to be proud of. She has overseen a massive effort within law enforcement to upskill to keep up with the level of criminal sophistication, with education programmes rolled out across forces.

PCeU has driven numerous national investigations into hacktivists, which resulted in the arrest and sentencing of numerous individuals involved with Anonymous and LulzSec. It has also cracked down on phishing and ransomware crews, whilst claiming plenty of savings and smashing objectives set by the government.

Having been granted £30 million of the government’s £650 million pot for fighting cyber crime, PCeU was tasked in 2011 with saving the country £504 million over four years. It has broken the £1 billion mark already.

Whistleblower case

It has not been all plain sailing for McMurdie, however. In 2011, she was accused of colluding with another police officer to push a junior detective out of the force.

Detective Sergeant Howard Shaw was allegedly forced out after he blew the whistle on Detective Inspector Kevin Williams, who, it was believed, had accessed questions stored on Met systems for an interview for a role within PCeU.

Shaw was later wrongly accused by McMurdie of breaking an order not to continue with an outside business interest and released from employment.

The Met fought a tribunal brought by Shaw, but a judge found in favour of the whistleblower, who was granted compensation and returned to PCeU, before moving to a different part of the Met.

McMurdie said she could not comment on the matter.

A warning

McMurdie had a warning for the future of cyber policing in the UK, saying there was much work to do to get the level of law enforcement up the standard it needed to be.

“There is still masses to be done, but everything is moving in the right direction,” McMurdie told TechWeek. “The national agency will hopefully set the standards and coordinate activity as the national lead.

“It’s going in the right direction but there’s still a massive amount to be progressed, as we all know.

“In cyber you can’t move slow, it moves too damn quick. A lot of our processes and policies are too slow to be as dynamic as the cyber threat is.”

McMurdie has spent 32 years in the Met, revealing she is considering work within industry.

“I’m too young to put my feet up,” she added. “Hopefully I’ll be exploring for an opportunity to do something in industry.”

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