Revealed: Cyber crimefighting successes

The police body tasked with fighting e-crime in the UK has revealed some of its cyber crimefighting successes - but e-crime still appears a low priority.

The Serious Organised Crime Agency's (Soca) 2007 to 2008 report details work by the agency over the past year.

Notable cyber crime success include Operation Ajowan, where Soca broke up a website where criminals traded stolen bank, credit and identity information that could have cost the UK finance sector at least £6m.

In another operation Soca blocked the deployment of an advanced Trojan that was harvesting personal and financial data, arresting the criminals and restricting losses to £265,000 out of the possible £6m-plus.

Soca has also sent out 46 alerts to UK business, which included 11 alerts to UK financial institutions detailing more than 46,000 online account details that had been compromised by phishing and virus attacks, a system for UK call centres to protect personal data and fraud alert systems for banks and businesses.

But whereas the report details scores of successful operations to stop drug trafficking there is little other mention of the work of Soca's e-crime unit and it does not specify how many of its 2,033 arrests were related to cyber crime.

The National High Tech Crime Unit (NHCTU) was rolled into Soca in 2006, prompting claims from business and politicians that cyber crime policing was being diluted.

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

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

We want to hear your views about this campaign and your experiences of being a victim of cyber crime. Were you happy with the way your case was handled? Make your voice heard by leaving a Reader Comment below or emailing us in confidence at editorial@silicon.com.

E-crime is not explicitly identified as one of Soca's priority areas - drug trafficking, organised immigration crime and fraud - as set by the government.

But a Soca spokesman said there were more resources dedicated to the e-crime unit within Soca then there had been in the NHTCU, saying it was served by a team of 58 staff focusing almost exclusively on cyber crime, and that child pornography was now handled by the separate Child Exploitation and Online Protection unit.

He said: "E-crime is not a stand alone area as a priority for Soca but that does not mean it is less important to the agency.

"It receives more attention than it used to."

He added that Soca's e-crime unit worked with 140 liaison officers worldwide and worked closely on cyber threats with five other major western countries.

The Association of Chief Police Officers and the Metropolitan Police Service are waiting to see if the Home Office will grant £1.3m in start-up costs for their proposed Policing Central E-crime Unit, which would co-ordinate cyber crime investigations by local forces nationwide.

The report also praises upgrades to Soca's IT infrastructure and services which it says has "resulted in better access for staff to an increased volume of intelligence material across the organisation".

These include an e-learning programme, a self service toolbox allowing access to more internal services, the roll out of Soca's IT network to liaison officers overseas, the first phase of a corporate knowledge management system and the development of its casework management system to enable it to be used by more people at the same time.