Microsoft hosted 190 police and law enforcement officers for
three days' training in IT forensics this week, saving the
government some £325,000.
It's Microsoft's way of giving something back to the industry,
says Ed Gibson, the former FBI agent who became Microsoft UK's
computer security advisor four years ago.
But the event highlights the lack of public sector funding for
fighting e-crime, at a time when the cost of hacking and virus
attacks on businesses is growing.
Cybercrime is global, increasingly organised, well-funded,
targeted, sophisticated and effective.
Last year, the average cost of security incidents rose by 30%,
according to management consultant PricewaterhouseCoopers. And
Apacs, the payment industry association, says e-frauds were up 130%
last year.
Gibson has no illusions about the size of the task. Years of
advising the US Embassy on computer security issues made him
sympathetic to the law enforcement industry's struggle to come to
grips with cybercrime. It's why he fought so hard to persuade
Microsoft to sponsor the annual training session, he says.
Most of the computers that police are likely to come across in
an investigation will run Microsoft code, so who better than
Microsoft to teach their secrets, he says.
Microsoft developed a tool for forensic investigators, the
Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor or Cofee, two years
ago.
Cofee is a set of triage tools, which allow investigators to
prioritise and collect computer-based evidence for forensic
examination from a running computer system.
The plan was for Microsoft to give it away to police forces, he
says. But lawyers stepped in, muttering about liability. Microsoft
has now negotiated a deal with Interpol, the international police
agency, for it to distribute the software and train police officers
in the use of Cofee.
Such altruism comes at a price. Delegates inevitably hear about
new products such as Windows 7 and the new Bing search engine and
how they create records of forensic interest. They might even
overhear how microsoft products fit into their forces'
administration.
But Peter Sommer, a professor at the London School of Economics,
says that might be a small price to pay. Funds for training in
computer forensics are hard to come by. Even the £3.5m in new money
(supplemented by £3.5m from the Met) to fund the new Police Central
e-Crime Unit has to stretch over three years, he says.
The government's determination to push for a universal broadband
service means that the 70% of UK homes with a computer will soon be
online. The police have to gear up for that, he says. "Even knife
crime may have a computer element because the suspect may have
bought the knife over the internet," he says.
Assistant commissioner Janet Williams, the Association of Chief
Police Officer's lead on computer crime, aims to give every
detective basic training in investigating e-enabled crime.
Those who attended Microsoft's course represented about 20% of
e-crime trained police. There is a long way to go, and the current
leadership vacuum at the Home Office is no help.