London city boss concedes ineffectiveness over cyber crime

The police commissioner for the City of London, Adrian Leppard, has confessed that the police have a lack of resources in handling increasingly advanced methods of cyber crime – and that banks are  making the situation worse.

Leppard said, at his appearance at a recent London TechUK conference, that the insufficient resources are due to hackers becoming more adept at extorting and stealing money over the internet, and that low rates of reporting come partially as a result of incidents being considered as unavoidable charges by banks.

Kevin Williams, one-time employee of the National Cyber Crime Unit, said that while an investment has been made in law enforcement both nationally and regionally, the police gap has more impact locally.

He said that although there officially remains a lack of cyber crime reporting, there is superb national organisation when it comes to sharing information.

He added:

“The results of such sharing can be seen in the increased number of arrests and botnet take downs. This has included the banks and internet security companies working collectively with the likes of CERT-UK, the NCA and regional policing to tackle the threat.”

If cyber crime remains underestimated, it will continue to cause more and more damage. Businesses themselves need to keep an eye on their own IT systems, which begins by looking at their IT security recruitment. As long as they are able to deal with security issues in-house, they will have less to worry about when it comes to external solutions.