ITU teams up with UN and Symantec in cyber crime fight

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have signed an agreement to work together to combat the growing threat of cyber crime.

The two organisations said that the global partnership will help make the internet a safer place for consumers and businesses by pooling their expertise and resources to help nations create legislation to deal with the issue.

The ITU's head of corporate strategy, Alexander Ntoko, told V3.co.uk that bringing together the work of the two organisations was a unique agreement and would help nations around the world benefit from increased expertise and knowledge.

"Cyber crime is increasing all the time and so bringing together law enforcement experts from the UNODC and telecoms experts from the ITU we can put in place a UN-wide system to combat this," he said.

"We will be able to provide assistance to governments on setting up the cyber crime laws and standards on dealing with issues like identity theft. With two billion internet users now, and four billion expected by 2014, it's important we address this now."

The ITU has also signed an agreement with security firm Symantec to use the vendor's technology as the basis for a quarterly Internet Security Threat Report to help governments and businesses better understand the threats that exist online.

Ntoko explained that Symantec had come to the ITU as one of its Impact coalition partners - private sector firms that provide assistance to the ITU on cyber security - and offered to use its network tools to provide detailed reports that can be passed on.