Greater collaboration between the UK’s technology industry and police forces across the country is needed to combat “high-volume, low-impact cybercrime”, according to a new report from techUK.
The paper says that a new approach is needed against this growing threat, as presently the authorities lack the skill and capacity to deal with the challenges that cybercrime presents.
Low-impact, the authors were key to highlight, refers to cyberattacks that are “unsophisticated” in nature – in no way does this negate the emotional impact that these types of crimes have on their victims.
"Digital technology is revolutionizing the way criminals operate,” explained James Murphy, associate director of defence and security at techUK.
“Police forces have made a number of positive steps to meet the challenge in recent years but they cannot meet it on their own.
“The ability to effectively tackle cybercrime remains the collaborative responsibility of civil society as a whole, including businesses, consumers and the technology industry.”
"The ability to effectively tackle cybercrime remains the collaborative responsibility of civil society as a whole, including businesses, consumers and the technology industry."
While cybercrime is now being recorded as a particular offence in its own right in the UK – online fraud had been documented as just being fraud – there is a long way to go in generating a clear picture of how prevalent cybercrime is.
Approximately 50 percent of police forces admitted that they would not be able to generate accurate figures for cybercrime unless they “manually” analyzed “every crime in their recording systems”.
The report, titled Partners against crime: How can industry help the police to fight cybercrime?, has come up with a number of suggestions to improve the current situation.
This includes establishing a “new lexicon” for cybercrime reporting; encouraging the reporting of cybercrime incidents (and developing tools to make this possible); and helping businesses boost their approach to cybersecurity.
"This report is thought-provoking and timely,” commented Andrew Rogoyski, vice president of cyber security services at CGI UK Ltd.
“The challenge of dealing with large scale cybercrime is a ticking time bomb - it will become a major public issue within months rather than years.”
