Commentary: Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe on new cybercrime push

 
Quizzed: Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe21 November 2013
WEST END FINAL

Get our award-winning daily news email featuring exclusive stories, opinion and expert analysis

I would like to be emailed about offers, event and updates from Evening Standard. Read our privacy notice.

Over the next month more Londoners than ever before will go online and take part in what retailers hope will be a £10 billion Christmas internet spending spree. The world wide web has given consumers an unprecedented opportunity to conduct our shopping, banking and other financial activities.

The unpalatable truth, however, is that fraudsters, too, have identified an opportunity to empty people’s wallets for them. Today, the stark reality is that cybercrime is the growth industry of the criminal underworld.

In the last year there has been a 60 per cent rise in the number of reports of cybercrime. In the financial year 2012/13, cybercrime and other types of fraud cost the British economy £81 billion. Criminals have realised there are huge rewards to be reaped from online fraud, while the risk of getting arrested falls way below that of armed robbers, for instance.

Cybercrime presents unique challenges for investigators — criminals can travel across force borders and even countries, targeting thousands of potential victims at once with the click of a mouse. They never need to break cover and can hide behind complex online identities.

As the architect of the Met’s “Total Policing” model, which sets out our determination to make London the most hostile territory in the world for all criminals, this situation troubles me and my colleagues greatly.

And it is a situation that will not be allowed to continue. In 2014, the Met is planning a major step change in the way we deal with cybercrime by establishing a world-leading unit to counter online criminals. Our aims are fivefold: to bring more fraudsters and cyber-criminals to justice; to improve the service to their victims; to step up prevention help and advice to individuals and businesses; to dedicate more organised crime teams to stemming the harm caused by the most prolific cyber-criminals; and to invite business and industry to match our determination and work with us to combat fraud and cybercrime.

The fact is that the traditional way of policing cybercrime has not been working. Only a fraction of cybercrime and fraud now reported to the Action Fraud centre is ever referred on to a police force, so thousands of victims a year do not so much as hear from an officer. The traditional policing model is simply not geared towards tackling these types of high-volume online crimes, so we are proposing to create a centre of excellence with the skills and personnel to deliver a first-class response. I believe we are in a strong position to deliver a “cyber force” befitting the world’s most important city.

There is also a public perception that cybercrime is victimless — but this could not be further from the truth. These are real people suffering real distress, and they deserve more.

We will dedicate hundreds more officers solely to these types of crime, and make contact with vastly more victims than has previously been possible.

Our experts will also be tasked with looking into the increasing menace posed by the dark net, where organised criminals use the shadiest corners of the web to trade weapons, drugs and child pornography.

You may be aware of the Met’s Police Central e-crime Unit, which was responsible for successfully investigating some of the world’s most sophisticated online criminal networks, targeting banks, businesses — and ultimately individuals — to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds. A front-page story in this newspaper, in September, outlined how it foiled an alleged attempt to take over a bank’s computer systems, and four people have now been charged as a result of their fine work.

While the national responsibility for co-ordinating the police response to cybercrime has now been passed to the National Crime Agency (NCA), a core of highly skilled detectives and support staff has been retained by the Met and will form the foundation stone of the new unit.

This unit will be focused on victims and criminals in the capital, but will work closely with the NCA because, by its very nature, this type of crime tends to cut across borders.

Clearly this will come at a significant cost. Over the coming months we will be speaking to partners in the commercial sector, especially in the banking industry, who are often the ones to suffer the greatest financial loss at the hands of internet fraudsters, to see if some of the burden of this expense can be removed from the public purse.

We know that banks absorb a huge amount of the cost of this type of crime while hugely under-reporting it, and I hope a reinvigorated partnership can improve this state of affairs.

Criminals are constantly evolving their crimes in order to take advantage of the technologies that enrich our lives in so many ways. My message to them is that the Met is at the forefront of a policing revolution and the days of cyber crime as a low-risk career choice are numbered.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in