British Computer Society sets up crime unit to help police

The British Computer Society (BCS) has set up a think-tank to offer police help with fighting cyber crime.

The move comes in the wake of criticism from some vendors that the police have not invested enough in developing specialist “cyber cops”.

The BCS Cybercrime Forensics Specialist Group is focusing on developing scientific measures to gather and process digital evidence of law enforcement agencies and the unit is liaising with the National Police Improvement Agency.

Denis Edgar-Nevill, the group’s chairman and a BCS Fellow, said that there were more criminals involved in exploiting technology.

“The growing complexity and vulnerability of computer systems coupled with ever-evolving forms of criminal activities requires continual research and development to safeguard the integrity and security of systems for computer users,” he said.

“We particularly want to look at how the Chinese tackled this issue in the lead up to this year’s Olympics Games. As we move closer to 2012, cybercrime will become an even more important focus for the UK,” he added.

In the past couple of weeks a number of reports have been issued by the security industry predicting the threat landscape for next year and all have agreed that cyber crime is increasing and using the web as the platform to attack individuals and companies.