Europol: Just over a year ago, on 11 January 2013, the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) at Europol opened its doors for business. Created to strengthen the European Union’s law enforcement community response to cybercrime, EC3‘s brief was to help protect European citizens and businesses against existing and future cyber threats.
The creation of a European Cybercrime Centre was a priority in the EU Security Strategy and strongly backed by European ministers. The decision to establish EC3 within Europol has meant that existing expertise has been reallocated and significantly expanded, and new functions created to focus on the specific tasks given to EC3.