Extra skills must to check rising cybercrimes

Cybercrimes have been mushrooming, particularly online frauds, said an official press release quoting a report on fighting cybercrimes released on Monday.

While the police have been relentlessly developing their capacity to investigate into cybercrimes, cybercrimes too persistently adopt new forms forcing the authorities to keep pace with these developments, pointed out the report.

“The police must have the capacity and competence to identify crimes connected to data networks, prevent cybercrimes, expose cybercriminals and investigate into cybercrimes,” said Senior Adviser for Legislative Affairs Tiina Ferm who coordinated the report.

The report lists measures to achieve these goals. The measures include training and development of methods used in fighting cybercrimes and a common situation picture for the authorities. The changing operational environment also requires constant assessment and development of legislation and sufficient resources for fighting cybercrime.

In the global context, the threats have become more diverse and new kinds of threats have emerged along the existing ones. The new threats may arise quickly and have effects that are hard to predict. Criminals come up constantly with new ways of committing offences by combining old and new. For instance, crimes involving the use of drones have emerged as a phenomenon in Finland, too. With drones it is possible to spy, scan, and infect networks and exploit vulnerable devices wirelessly.

The internet of things will also change the way of committing crimes. The internet of things means information technology has been integrated into ordinary items, such as home appliances, that can be monitored and controlled over the internet with a computer, phone, tablet or other devices.

Additional training on cyber issues will be provided to police cadets during their basic training and high-quality specialised training will also be offered to police officers specialising in cybercrime. The Police University College also holds training courses and carries out research cooperation with the authorities, universities and higher education institutions.

Police resource requirements for fighting cybercrime involve, in particular, developing investigation into cybercrimes, fighting serious cybercrimes, and intelligence gathering on information networks.

The authorities must have a common situation picture on cybercrimes. With the situation picture, information at the operational level obtained from the authorities and corporations could be combined with other observations into holistic information on the phenomena. Cooperation with other authorities and business life is important because cybercrimes and cyber threats do not stop at borders and they add to the workload of a number of authorities, said the report.

The report was included in the Government Programme of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä and was drawn up in cooperation with the Ministry of the Interior, a working group appointed by the National Police Board, Finnish Security Intelligence Service, and the National Bureau of Investigation.

The report utilises the development proposals made by a project on improving situation awareness on cybercrimes financed by the government and Europol’s Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment.