The Conservative Party will push for a cybersecurity minister
to raise awareness of the importance of fighting computer crime,
the shadow home affairs minister said yesterday.
Conservative MP James
Brokenshire said computer crime was the fastest-growing crime
in Britain. But there was too little appreciation in Westminster of
its impact on businesses and the public.
Brokenshire was speaking to 200 police and law enforcement
officials at a three-day course on computer forensics hosted by
Microsoft.
It is essential to make cybercrime a mainstream issue, he said.
"This is not just for techies."
In the US, president Barack Obama has produced a
cybersecurity review, and delegates at the Davos World Economic
Forum debated cybersecurity in February.
"But it is still not in the hearts of British politicians. We do
not have the appropriate attitude," said Brokenshire.
Independent peer Lord Erroll, speaking at the same event, said
the merger of the former National High-Tech Crime Unit into the
Serious Organised Crime Agency in April 2006 was a mistake.
The merger had opened the door to cybercriminals. All they had
to do was avoid being international and avoid being "serious", and
they fell below Soca's radar, he said.
The UK has only about 1,000 police officers trained in
cybercrime investigations. However, the creation of the
Police Central E-Crime Unit in September 2008, was a step
forward in extending police forces' knowledge and investigative
capacity, Errol said.
The new
National Fraud Reporting Centre would be essential for
collecting statistical information, he said.
Brokenshire said payment industry association Apacs had reported
a 130% increase in computer-aided fraud, but there were no reliable
figures on other forms of cybercrime. Anecdotal evidence from
senior police officers showed a growing concern over computer
crime.
The FBI sting operation against the
Dark Market malware marketplace and the
McColo take-down, which halved spam for several weeks, show how
serious cybercrime is, he said.
The
denial of service attacks against Estonia in May 2007 were
another sign of the vulnerability of national networks to
attack.
Brokenshire said it was incredible that Britain had not yet
ratified the
European Convention on Cybercrime. He believed the treaty might
now be signed in July.
He called for closer cooperation between local authorities and
Nato's
centre of excellence for cybersecurity, which was set up in the
wake of the Estonia attack.