The Europol European Cybercrime Centre (EC3), National Crime Agency and FBI have combined forces to launch the Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce (J-CAT).
Coordinating and strengthening international investigations against cyber threats, the J-CAT will be led by Andy Archibald, deputy director of the National Cyber Crime Unit from the NCA, and will comprise a team composed of cyber liaison officers from committed and closely involved member States, non-EU law enforcement partners and EC3.
Archibald said: “There are many challenges faced by law enforcement agencies with regards to cyber criminals and cyber attacks, this is why there needs to be a truly holistic and collaborative approach taken when tackling them.
“The J-CAT will, for the first time, bring together a coalition of countries across Europe and beyond to coordinate the operational response to the common current and emerging global cyber threats faced by J-CAT members.”
Key contributors to the intelligence pool will be the EU Member States via EC3, and other law enforcement cooperation partners from Canada and the USA, with commitments from Australia and Colombia.
EC3 advisor and CEO of BH Consulting Brian Honan told IT Security Guru said that for cooperation groups like this, success can be measured from many different aspects.
“Given the international dimension for the group, one factor that I think will be considered will be how much does the group streamline the process of exchanging information between the different participants and how effective can that information be used,” he said.
“Success will not be measured alone on how many arrests are made but how much more robust and strengthened the relationships between the different cyber crime units are.”
Asked if it is better to have organisations like this policing the internet than individual companies, such as the No-IP debacle that Microsoft got caught up in, Honan said that public/private cooperation is vital in dealing with cyber crime, but the most effective way to deal with cyber crime is not by just dismantling the infrastructure criminals use, but in the arrests of those behind the botnets and other cyber crime.
He said: “Putting those responsible for the crime in jail will have a more lasting impact. Something that hopefully J-CAT will result in over the coming months.”
The J-CAT initiative is slated to be a six month pilot, Honan said he was unaware if there are plans to expand after the initial six months. The J-CAT will gather data on specific criminal themes from national repositories and from relevant government and private partners, as well as transforming this raw data into actionable intelligence, and proposing targets and networks for investigations.
In addition, it will organise dedicated consultation meetings with key actors in the private sector and the Computer Emergency Response Teams for the EU institutions, bodies and agencies (CERT-EU), to obtain their input on cybercrime threats that affect them and society in general.
Troels Oerting, head of the EC3, said: “Today is a good day for those fighting cyber crime in Europe and beyond. For the first time in modern police history a multi-lateral permanent cyber crime taskforce has been established in Europe to coordinate investigations against top cyber criminal networks.
“The aim is not purely strategic, but also very operational. The goal is to prevent cyber crime, to disrupt it, catch crooks and se
ize their illegal profits. This is a first step in a long walk towards an open, transparent, free but also safe internet.”
