Companies Want a Centralized E-crime Unit

Companies have shown their concern on the lack of any centralized body to which they can enter their complaints of computer crimes and contact the government for setting up a centralized police e crime unit.

The latest misplacement of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs' (HMRC) CD which contains 25 Million records has shifted the attention to a debate that has been boiling from a pretty long time. Although the CD has not been fallen under the hands of cyber criminals, but probably has been misplaced somewhere; the incident has thrown light on the lack of data on the extent of cyber crime.

On November 10, 2007, many high class security experts have signed an online petition - Downing Street Website - that asks the government to set up a central e-crime unit.

Chief Executive of the Corporate IT Forum, David Roberts, whose company represents almost half of the FTSE 100 companies, said that his members believe that the government does not take cyber crime seriously and there is lack of source, except the local police, where e-crime can be registered. Mr. David also added that the police have a little understanding of it. And unfortunately, it is a grave problem.

However, the National High Tech Crime Unit has forged a close relation with industry as this unit has combined with other agencies to build the larger Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) in April 2006. Further, the SOCA doesn't take cyber crime reports easily and only takes larger cases.

One of the signatories to petition, Lord Enroll, said that there is no organization which takes up the small cases and it is the small stuff which harms the citizens a lot. Enroll also added that SOCA is only interested in the larger stuff, that is why they ask for a centralized e-crime unit, as per the reports of ft.com on December 18, 2007. Lord Erroll also sits on the Lords Committee.

The concern is especially for the lack of resources for taking the smaller computer crimes viz. small amounts of money taken from online bank accounts and fraud on the Ebay auction site.

Related article: Companies Should Report Cybercrime

» SPAMfighter News - 1/2/2008