Police forces skill-up to fight cyber crime

Veracode reveals 3,800 police have enrolled in training programmes to become better at investigating cyber crime

UK police forces are taking action to improve officers' cyber crime-fighting skills, a freedom of information (FoI) request has revealed.

According to figures obtained by web security firm Veracode, more than 3,800 police officers have enrolled in training designed to make them better at investigating cyber crimes.

The news comes after the head of MI6 recently warned that law enforcement and government intelligence agencies are engaged in a "technological arms race" with cyber criminals and terrorists whose methods are "unconstrained by consideration of ethics and law".

Veracode said its findings suggest the training will enable local police forces to better investigate cyber crime both inside and outside their jurisdiction, and better support National Cyber Crime Unit investigations into the most serious cases of cyber crime.

Chris Wysopal, co-founder, CISO and CTO at Veracode, welcomed the police taking the initiative in the fight against cyber crime.

"These findings suggest how the growing threat of cyber crime has reached police officers working on the beat each and every day. It is vital that forces continue to invest in training officers to tackle this increasing danger to businesses and members of the public alike," he said.

Like Paul Gillen, head of operations for Europol's European Cybercrime Centre, Veracode believes collaboration is key to fighting computer hackers and other cyber criminals.

"Collaboration is essential to stemming the tide of cyber crime sweeping the UK. Just as connectivity has forever changed business... this has also dramatically shifted how crimes are committed," argued Wysopal.

"Application vulnerabilities in internet-connected home automation devices have the power to turn what might have been a simple burglary into a regional theft ring stretching beyond a single community, perhaps even crossing local authority jurisdictions," he said. "A local police force skilled at identifying and remediating such an attack early on might prevent a costly escalation."

However, Wysopal warned that there's still much work to be done before law enforcement agencies are fully equipped to take the fight to cyber criminals.

"While the cyber security training exercises are certainly a step in the right direction, we're not yet at a point where there's a cyber forensics expert attached to each local police force that businesses can turn to for help," he said.

"Creating this faculty would certainly be of help to the over-stretched national units, such as the National Cyber Crime Unit, which currently handles most reported cyber crime inquiries," Wysopal concluded.

Last month saw the release of a Veracode report that warned the Internet of Things poses a cyber security risk that could leave businesses and consumers open to both cyber and physical crimes because connected devices aren't designed with privacy or data security in mind.