Cyber crime police consider app for people to report security breaches

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Cyber crime police are considering building an app for people and businesses to anonymously report online security breaches.

The app could provide witnesses with anonymity to protect businesses from the reputational damage of admitting they have been hacked.

It could also be used by victims wanting to report cyber abuse, bullying or fraud, according to Chief constable Stephen Kavanagh.

Chief Constable Kavanagh, who also chairs the Digital Investigation and Intelligence (DII) capabilities management group and digital policing board (DPB), said the police need to collaborate with the cyber security industry and find imaginative ways to deal with the fast-moving issue of cyber crime including child abuse and financial fraud.

“The concept of dealing with cybercrime by typing 999 or 101 is a 1940s model of what policing should be. In the digital age victims want to report crime online or with apps,” he told the Independent.

“Some might even want to give us intelligence via apps to maintain their anonymity,” he added.

Cyber crime is rapidly increasing in the UK and placing a strain on police resources.

It was estimated that more than 1.5 million cyber-crimes (costing around £12 billion) were not reported by individuals and businesses in 2013-14 in a city of London Police submission to the London Assembly’s Online Crime Working Group. This means that in 2013-14 about 85 per cent of fraud and cyber-crime offences were not reported to the police.

In 2015, the Crime Survey for England and Wales reported that about 3.8 million adults in England and Wales had been victims of some form of online fraud in the space of a year.

On the business side, more than half of UK organisations have been the victim of an economic crime, an illegal act committed by an individual or a group to obtain a financial or professional advantage, in the last two years, outstripping countries such as the US and China, according to a study by PwC’s.

David Webber, Managing Director of Intelligent Environments, said recent high profile hacking attacks such as Ashley Maddison, Bitdefender and TalkTalk have put the issues at the top of people’s mind and some companies are already seeing the damage.

TalkTalk profits have more than halved after an attack on its systems last October resulted in 160,000 customers' credit card and bank card details being exposed. The “significant and sustained cyber-attack” cost TalkTalk £42 million and resulted in the loss of 101,000 subscribers in the third quarter of 2015 as users fled to other networks.

A third of UK organisations admitted they have no response plan to protect themselves from an attack, PwC found. Only 12 per cent of respondents believe that law enforcement authorities have the necessary skills to help.

“We need is to create a forum where [companies] can share information in an anonymous forum without fear of damaging their reputation if necessary,” Kavanagh said.

Chief Constable Kavanagh said The National Counter Terrorism Security Office (the police unit which advises the British Government on its counter terrorism strategy) and The National Crime Agency were adapting more quickly but progress in the development of skills at a local level was moving more slowly.

Andrew Rogoyski, head of cybersecurity at the UK branch of CGI, an information technology consulting company, said he feared an app would lead to an increase in the number of crimes reported but would not necessarily lead to more investigations and arrests.

The cyber-security industry has to deal with 43 different chief constables and 43 police and crime commissions. This means specialists find it harder to get in touch with the people in charge of dealing with cyber crime and offer their insights, Rogoyski explained.

“The problem of the law enforcement market is that it is extremely fragmented, lots of companies just escaped and said ‘it’s not worth it’ or thought it was too complicated and the rewards were too small,” Rogoyski said.

“But it's hugely helpful to see that a coherent strategy is beginning to emerge, addressing some of the real problems we’ve seen in the last few years. The key is to engage with the industry as they are the one who know where the market is going,” he added.

An inaugural meeting of the Digital Policing Board will be held for the first time this month to discuss how the two sectors can collaborate better together and Kavannagh is hoping to see an improvement in the way the police force engages with tech firms in the next three to six months.