Cybercrime keeps police ever busier

Cybercrime volumes have increased and will keep growing significantly. In particular, the number of online frauds has grown. Police is constantly developing capabilities to investigate cybercrime. Cybercrime constantly adopts new forms and the authorities need to keep pace with these developments.

- The police must have the capabilities and competence to identify crime connected to data networks, prevent cybercrime, expose cyber criminals and investigate cybercrime, says Tiina Ferm, Senior Adviser for Legislative Affairs, who coordinated the report on fighting cybercrime.

The report lists measures to achieve these goals. The measures include training and development of methods used in fighting cybercrime 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.

New ways to commit crime on the increase also in Finland

In a global world the threats have become more diverse and new kinds of threats have emerged along 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, crime involving the use of drones has emerged as a phenomenon also in Finland. With drones it is possible to conduct espionage, scan and infect networks and exploit vulnerable devices wirelessly.

The internet of things will also change the way crimes are committed. The internet of things means that 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 in police basic training

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

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

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

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, the working group appointed by the National Police Board, the Finnish Security Intelligence Service and the National Bureau of Investigation. The report utilises the development proposals included in the project on improving situation awareness on cybercrime financed by the Government and Europol’s Organised Crime Threat Assessment on cybercrime. The report was extensively circulated for comments in April 2016.

The report (in Finnish) can be found here:
http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-324-136-7

Inquiries:
Tiina Ferm, Senior Adviser for Legislative Affairs, tel. +358 295 488 352, [email protected]