For the first time in the police history, Europol has initiated a multi-lateral taskforce to fight against cyber criminals by launching the Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce or J-CAT, with an aim to target high profile cyber crimes involving national and international criminals.
The J-CAT will have a pilot course for 6 months during which the members will device actionable plans to trace the criminals. UK National Crime Agency Deputy Director Andy Archibald leads the team with the contributors being representatives of the member states of the European Cybercrime Center (EC3). The unit will function at a secure office at Europol.
The J-CAT will also partner with law enforcement agencies in countries including Austria, Canada, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, the Netherlands, UK and US among others. Australia and Colombia are expected to join shortly. Troels Oerting, head of the EC3 said that the taskforce will take action against cyber crimes and not just function as a think tank forming strategies.
Oerting also added that the goal of J-CAT will be to prevent and disrupt cybercrime while also catching criminals and seizing their profits.
Archibald said in a statement that there are a lot of challenges in tackling cyber crimes and a “holistic and collaborative approach” is required in order to handle them. The J-CAT will require the cooperation of law enforcement agencies beyond Europe.
While it is well known that Ukraine and Russia have some of the prominent yet unreported cybercrimes, Russian authorities have not been cooperative in the past, according to Oerting. However, J-CAT will liaise with the police in different countries to track them down.
The type of cyber crimes handled by the J-CAT includes stealing of information from national repositories, breaking into banking networks, online frauds and such other high end crimes putting a large number of individuals and their identities at stake.
