UK Plc calls for national police e-crime force

The UK's major industry and business groups have backed silicon.com's e-Crime Crackdown campaign, which is calling for the creation of a new national police e-crime unit to combat the growing threat of cyber crime.

The Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the British Retail Consortium (BRC), the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), blue chip user group the Corporate IT Forum (Tif) and tech industry trade body Intellect are all backing the campaign for a dedicated police unit to co-ordinate the investigation and recording of cyber crime nationwide.

silicon.com's e-Crime Crackdown campaign is calling for a national UK e-crime police unit.

The unit would provide leadership and expertise to co-ordinate investigations nationwide and collate reports from forces across the country, as well as offering a central point of contact for reporting cyber crime.

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Also swelling the fast-growing ranks of supporters are a former chief security advisor to the White House and IT bosses from two industries heavily targeted by online criminals, financial services and gambling.

Jeremy Beale, head of e-business at the CBI, said the lack of a unit is a long-standing issue that needs addressing: "We do support establishing such a centre, and have been calling for one for years."

Catherine Bowen, head of crime policy at the BRC, said: "The Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) have not maintained those links with industry on business-related e-crime, we seem to have fallen off the bottom of the scale since the National High Tech Crime Unit was rolled into Soca.

"A national e-crime unit is something that we would support, we are looking at ways of sharing information among retailers but it needs governing at a national level."

A spokeswoman for the FSB said: "The current policing arrangements for dealing with cyber crime are lamentable in that there is no centralised mechanism for dealing specifically with e-crime and there is a huge lack of clarity around which police service is responsible if, say, the cyber criminal is based in Manchester and the victim is based in London.

"The FSB has been calling for a dedicated e-crime policing centre for a long time. Small businesses cannot feel more confident about trading online, nor customers about shopping online, until more is done."

David Roberts, CEO of Tif, said he was disappointed that the 2008 budget contained no new funding to fight e-crime.

He said: "The government must invest more money in education in order to help the public protect themselves against high tech criminals and crucially, bring back a well resourced, highly skilled centralised unit for the investigation of all forms of electronic crime."

A spokesman for Intellect said: "A centralised unit and a standardised way of handling e-crime enquiries is certainly something that Intellect would welcome as it would better protect both businesses and individuals."

Former White House cyber security advisor Howard Schmidt, who has also worked for eBay and Microsoft, also backed the creation of a UK e-crime unit.

He said: "While many companies have become more inclined to report cyber crime they are often challenged with who to report it to, what kinds of resources will be applied to the investigation and whether there is sufficient expertise to successfully bring the case to closure. A dedicated cyber policing unit could prove invaluable in dealing with these challenges."

Last year Gala Coral E-commerce had its UK gambling websites taken out for almost half an hour by a new type of almost undetectable and unstoppable botnet attack.

Peter Bassill, information security officer with Gala Coral E-commerce, said that the lack of a dedicated unit means police have fallen behind the criminals.

He said: "Law enforcement teams are now playing catch-up. The proposals put forward by the Met and ACPO are very promising, we just hope they get funding."

Jack Cutts, head of IT for Nottingham Building Society, added: "We are very much in support, a co-ordinated group of people with the relevant skills would seem to be the best way forward."