Police Central e-Crime Unit's cyber crime effort saves UK £140m

The Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) has saved the UK economy over £140m in the past six months thanks to its efforts in cyber crime prevention.

The organisation, which was set up in 2008, explained that its successes in the past six months meant that it had already achieved 30 per cent of its £504m harm reduction target over the next four years.

The government pledged £30m to cyber security policing earlier this year from the overall national security budget, which got a £500m boost in October 2010 as the coalition began to focus on the growing threats from cyber space.

"This initial result is only a small sample of the current investigations and interventions being conducted," said Detective Superintendent Charlie McMurdie of the PCeU.

"While providing an investment-to-return ratio of 1:35, the figure alone does not capture the other important benefits gleaned from the learning obtained from targeting the higher echelon of cyber criminals that we then share with our partners."

The PCeU highlighted the successful Operation Pagode investigation into an underground forum for cyber criminals, and the Operation Dynamaphone investigation into co-ordinated online banking fraud and phishing attacks, as two examples of success.

Pagode saved £84m "worth of harm" while Dynamaphone saved £5.5m, said the police.

Jason Hart, EMEA managing director at authentication firm CRYPTOCard, said that the high-profile successes of the PCeU highlight the ongoing threat facing businesses.

"Companies have to remain vigilant and do everything they can to implement robust security strategies," he added.

"At the moment there are far too many blind spots, such as static passwords, that act like a back gate for criminals allowing them to sneak in and out of the corporate network without being caught."

Paul Vlissidis, technical director at consultancy NGS Secure, suggested that more could be done to support the good work already begun by the PCeU.

"There's still more to be done. Chatham House only reported last month that cyber crime could be costing the economy billions of pounds a year, so is the £30m of funding plugged into developing this e-crime unit really enough?" he said.

"It would be great to see this good work publicised and the unit recognised as a valuable investment that would benefit from more funding. Tangible savings are a much more positive way of publicising cyber security than data thefts."