26 September 2014
Kaspersky Lab joins forces with the City of London Police, with the aim of training police forces and businesses throughout Britain on how to combat digital crime.
Digital crime accounts for a fairly large proportion of fraud incidents reported today, with seven out of ten frauds being related to the Internet, according to the United Kingdom's National Fraud Intelligence Bureau. However, the complex and unknown to the general public nature of these crimes creates problems both in dealing with them and in detecting and understanding them.
To address the rise of digital crime, the City of London Police sought the assistance of Kaspersky Lab specialists, with the aim of training police officers at every level, on the constantly increasing online threats. This innovative training program – the first of its kind for law enforcement agencies of the United Kingdom – will provide the necessary skills and knowledge for detecting and combating cyber crimes – from deceiving an individual victim during an online purchase, to a targeted attack against a business with losses of thousands of pounds.
The program will expand to more services and large enterprises in the United Kingdom, aiming to upgrade their self‑protection capabilities against digital attacks. Combining theoretical knowledge with practice, the training program, which lasts one week, provides hands‑on experience and contributes to developing important skills such as monitoring network traffic, analyzing hard‑drive images, and dissecting malicious software. In this context, trainees will use specialized training tools and a special methodology developed by Kaspersky Lab. During the training, the need to improve the reporting process for fraud incidents by businesses will also be emphasized, to ensure that police and security services can have a clear picture of the issue.
The first program was successfully completed by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau in February 2014. The training program focuses on threats against financial institutions and government agencies, which are also the top targets of online fraud in the United Kingdom. However, the skills acquired by participants can also be applied to combating digital threats that may affect the general public.
«Since the complexity of digital crime is constantly increasing, it is imperative that the service's knowledge about these threats also grows at the same rate», commented David Clark, Head of the Economic Crime Directorate at the City of London Police. «With over 21,000 digital crimes recorded in the United Kingdom in the first quarter of 2014, it is clear that ordinary users and businesses are at risk and need protection. The UK police must be ready to identify these crimes and have the necessary knowledge to confront them head‑on. Cooperation with Kaspersky Lab further underscores our role as a national police service against economic crime and will strengthen our capabilities to combat digital fraud and digital crime at a national level», he added.
«It is an honor for Kaspersky Lab to take advantage of this opportunity and share with the City of London Police the extensive knowledge, the information and its predictions regarding digital security», commented Veniamin Levtsov, Vice-President, Corporate Sales and Business Development of Kaspersky Lab. «For 17 years, we have developed a series of dynamic data acquisition techniques and digital crime investigation, which will become a valuable tool for the law enforcement authorities of the United Kingdom», he added.
