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Unlike the cyber criminals they are trying to combat, police forces, governments and private businesses struggle to collaborate effectively

Fighting crime used to be, if not easy, then at least relatively straightforward. It was a policeman’s job to catch anyone who had committed any of a well-understood set of crimes.

“When I was recruited in the good old days, the criteria was that I be at least 177cm high, have good eyes, and that I could hammer people in the head and follow an order,” says Troels Oerting, the assistant director of the cyber crime division at European criminal intelligence agency Europol.

Today, it is becoming more complex, thanks to the rise of cyber crime. The rapid evolution of cyber criminal methods is challenging the ability of police forces to define and identify crimes, let alone catch the perpetrators.

“At no time in our history have we had to stretch the definition of what constitutes crime more than we do now,” says Michael Welch, the deputy assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division. The division is expected to double in size during the next 12 to 18 months, he says.

The cyber criminal underground is a textbook example of how collaboration drives innovation. Malware marketplaces, for example, allow users to give feedback on what works and what does not, helping virus writers to hone their products for specific uses and rework code for new targets.

“What’s happened is the development of an illicit economy, where bad guys are trading tools, products and services with each other,” says James Lyne, a technology researcher at security firm Sophos. “You even see Q&A platforms, where you can upload your virus to check it against 30-odd antivirus products. It’s an astonishingly mature business model.”

But the frictionless collaboration seen in this illicit economy has not been matched by the authorities attempting to crack down on it. Instead, they run up against barriers to collaboration at every turn: between nations, between businesses, and between the public and private sectors.

This is an issue that the government acknowledged in its new cyber security strategy, published in November 2011.
The strategy specifically calls for greater collaboration between private and public sectors in securing the country’s interests online.

The strategy outlines plans for a cyber security ‘hub’, allowing the private and public sectors to exchange information on existing security threats within specific business sectors.

GCHQ, the Ministry of Defence’s listening station, will play a pivotal role in the strategy, the government revealed. It is to receive around half of the government’s planned £650 million investment in cyber security, and will be offering its security technologies to private industry.

“There may well be things developed by GCHQ that could be used for commercial purposes,” a GCHQ spokesperson told The Guardian newspaper. “Up until now, some of the clever things that have been developed have just sat on a shelf. GCHQ may not know how to use it, but private companies may be able to.”

Beyond that, though, many questions remain about how businesses, public bodies and police forces might collaborate in the fight against cyber crime. There are a number of legal and cultural barriers to this collaboration, and the government has yet to specify how it plans to overcome these.

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