Episode 71 – Tech-Crime & International Policing 2.0 – Europol’s former Executive Director Rob Wainwright

There is not a serious crime committed today that is not tech-enabled. Technology has transformed a whole range of different crimes and new avenues for terrorists to explore, including exploitation of social media platforms, as seen by the Islamic State. We are always racing against criminals to a certain extent but have great potential on the policing side.

Rob Wainwright, former Executive Director at Europol, gave an earlier presentation at Cebit Australia. His presentation, ‘Data – the new oil in the network economy fighting crime and terrorism’, highlighted a different age to come. Rob termed this ‘International Policing 2.0’, along with the AI race with crime, security by design and privacy by design.

“Threats rise along with innovation and capability”, Rob assured. Islamic state showed it was prepared to engage in online disruption and created a virtual califate, using over 100 social media platforms. The new bank robbers, like the Carbonak and Cobalt hacker group, now rob banks and score over $1.2billion.

Exploitation of new technology, plainly being seen now with cryptocurrency, will always occur. Cryptocurrencies are an ideal target as there is no central authority and crypto-jacking is rife.

Criminal enterprise is much more sophisticated and today, sustains a burgeoning trade and crime as a service sector. Even bi-spoked criminal services are increasingly becoming a competitive industry, amongst the criminal community itself. This is a dangerous trend. Bad actors are converging with terror and a crime nexus forms in firearms, travel documents and any other activity with a common link. State actors are upskilling and upscaling the criminal sector, with Russian capabilities shown to be able to take control of cyber ecosystems, including US Federal Elections. The seeping out of cyber-military skills and capability into the wild is also a dangerous trend.

Police are having some success but the threat will be sustained. The way police use data to identify modern crimes, that are essentially transnational in nature, needs to better targeted and better tracked across disparate information systems. Europol has been instrumental in transforming into a transnational intelligence unit, with over 1,200 law enforcement agencies now part of Europol. Europol has experienced an exponential rise over the last seven years, with a four fold increase in intelligence reports and six fold increase in cross border operations.

Recorded at Cebit Australia, Sydney 15 May 2018 #CEBITAUS

For the full CeBit Report – visit https://australiancybersecuritymagazine.com.au/episode-70-optimisation-paradigms-for-ai-and-protocols-for-the-point-of-singularity-liesl-yearsly-akin-com/