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Article:Scotland Yard to set up crack cybercrime unit.(Bill Goodwin)

Scotland Yard police chiefs are considering plans to create a computer crime unit of up to 25 detectives to investigate hacking and virus attacks against businesses in London and to provide specialist computer forensic services throughout the Metropolitan Police. The proposed unit, to be formed by merging five existing computer crime operations across the Met, will create a single team of computer crime specialists, second only to the National High-Tech Crime Unit, which focuses on major organised crime. The plan comes as the Met's existing computer crime unit, which will form the heart of the new operation, faces increasing pressure to provide support for paedophile and anti-terrorist work in addition to investigating a rising tide of hacking complaints. Detective inspector Clive Blake, acting head of the unit, said his nine-strong team was "stretched" and having to work evenings and weekends to keep up with the volume of work. He believes a single unit could help the Met work more efficiently.

"This is an entirely personal opinion but, looking at what the FBI and the US secret service have been doing, it would make sense to have a large, multitasking team, with an operational cell and an intelligence cell in a self-contained unit."

Well-funded organised crime syndicates are beginning to move into computer crime and are hiring hackers to break into firms' computer systems to gather intelligence on their intended victims, Blake said.

In comparison, the Met's computer crime unit, which lacks its own budget, is considered poorly resourced. It has been forced to ask suppliers to donate sophisticated equipment needed for investigations free of charge under the Met's sponsorship scheme.

Peter Sommer, security expert at the London School of Economics, said, provided the proposals for a combined computer crime unit were not derailed by internal politics in the Met, the move could give police greater flexibility to investigate crime complaints.

"If you have a larger group, you have more flexibility and you can also have people who specialise. The larger the group of people, the more sense it makes to have people specialising in, say, computer networks."

Under the plans, the merged unit would bring together computer crime operations from Special Branch, the paedophile unit, the anti-terrorism division, and clubs and vice.

bill.goodwin@rbi.co.uk

London's cybercrime unit, p18

Source Citation:Goodwin, Bill. "Scotland Yard looks to set up crack cybercrime unit." Computer Weekly (March 13, 2003): 3(1). Computer Database. Gale. Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. 27 Aug. 2009

VIEW AND COMMENT

This article is generally on the effort of the police department in Scotland to set up a unit in order to curb the problem of overwhelming computer crime. The unit will provide the Metropolitan Police with a specialize computer forensic services. The main objective of the unit consisting of 25 detectives is to investigate hacking and virus attacks against businesses in London. We can see that the area is in a major need of such unit as the cyber crimes is increasing day by day causing interruption to the companies and firms. This unit will stand second behind the National High-Tech Crime Unit which function focused on major organized crime.

The set up is to help improves Mets which is facing lack of support for paedophile and anti-terrorist work. The acting head of the unit, Clive Blake said that the team has to work extra hours and very hard to keep up with the bundles of work they have and he welcomes any other help to decrease the burden of work. He added that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the United States Secret Service really need the help of a major team such as the cyber crime unit to assist them. we can see that this unit is beneficial to all departments and it comes just at the right time to assist those departments.

Hackers are being hired by well funded crime syndicates to attack the system of the firms and victimize them for their own criminal benefits. These organizations are much more funded in comparison to the Met's computer crime unit. The unit have to force the suppliers to provide them with high-technology equipment for their investigations. This shows that the problem is not just the workmen but also in their budget. If they have much more less technology equipments, how woul they stopped the crime syndicates which are much more well funded than them?

A security expert in London School of Economics stated that the unit will give more flexibility in investigating cyber crimes as the unit will provide more well-specialised experts and help reduce the number of cyber crimes complaints.

As a conclusion, we can say that the world is in a major need of more security in order to stop cyber crimes which can bring negative effects globally and to set up such a unit can help reducing them.

POSTED BY: SITI ZUBAIDAH HELMATERLIDI