Europol Launches Taskforce To Trap Top Cyber-Criminals

Europol Launches Cybercriminal Taskforce

The Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce (J-CAT), a security body aimed at fighting online criminals, has been launched by cybercrime heads from police organizations from around the world. The aim of this taskforce is to fight some of the smartest online criminals that have become quite a menace in this day and age and still elude arrest.

The task force has incorporated experts from police organizations in countries such as Colombia, France, the Netherlands, the UK and Canada just to name a few. The taskforce is going to be put under a six months pilot and will be headed by Andy Archibald, who is the deputy head of the National Cyber Crime Unit at the National Crime Agency (UK).

Cybercrime Taskforce To Headquarter At The Hague

The purpose of J-CAT will be to coordinate investigations concerning the widespread insecurity problems on the Internet. This means dealing with issues such as finding dealers of hacker tools, finding phishing criminals among other activities that lead to security breaches online. To make sure that the operations are smooth, the new agency will have 18 experts from respectable law enforcement agencies worldwide relocate to The Hague where the agency will be based.

At the agency, the members of J-CAT are expected to share the intelligence they have on cyber criminals before they build cases against known criminals based on the information they collect. Once this is done, they will decide which cases are worth pursuing and do so till criminals are brought to book. The agency is expected to build strong cases against well-known top notch cyber criminals and have them fast-tracked to get these criminal arrested and prosecuted for their criminal activity online.

Russia Uncooperative – Reluctant To Help Cybercrime Taskforce

While many nations have cooperated, there is frustration over Russia’s lack of cooperation especially because it is known to be a hotbed of cyber criminal activity. For example, Evgeniy Bogachev, a Russian cyber crook is still eluding authorities and it would be easier to track him if Russian authorities were more cooperative.

In addition to Russia, the agency is planning to court assistance from countries in the Eastern Bloc because it has identified that a lot of cybercrimes originates from these places. Even at times when the cybercrime is not originating from such places, they provide a safe haven for cyber criminals because many of them have no cybercrime laws in place and neither do they have expertise to handle cyber crime and cyber criminals. Hopefully, the efforts of J-CAT will be fruitful and cases of cyber insecurity such as the recent photo hacking scandal will be put to an end.

Europol Launches Taskforce To Trap Top Cyber-Criminals

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