UK Government Forges Anti-Cyber Crime Partnership

The UK government has launched yet another initiative designed to take the fight to Internet crooks, with a project aimed at improving collaboration between government and private industry.

Minister for security at the Home Office, James Brokenshire, said he would chair a meeting of the new Cyber Crime Reduction Partnership with minister for universities and science, David Willetts, next week.

Fighting cyber crime

There were few details on who would attend the meeting, but Brokenshire added: “This will provide a new forum in which Government, law enforcement, industry and academia can regularly come together to tackle cyber crime more effectively.”

The government is participating in and establishing a large number of initiatives aimed at tackling cyber crime. Yet another information sharing group, the Cyber Security Information Sharing Partnership, CISP, will be formally launched later this month.

As announced last year, the government is also planning to set up a UK National Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT). Then there’s the global cyber capacity building centre, due to be based at one of the UK’s university cyber security centres of excellence.

The biggest project, however, is the establishment of the National Cyber Crime Unit, which will form part of the National Crime Agency, which launches in October this year.

A TechWeekEurope report into the establishment of the NCCU recently found there was nervousness amongst those involved and onlookers about the merger of the Polkice Central e-Crime Unit and the Serious Organised Crime Agency.

Much is still to do, with a boss yet to be announced and an HQ to be decided on.

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