Israel Police to tackle cyber crime with new unit

Sixty-person unit will be funded by Treasury; police inspector identifies cyber crime as issue that threatens whole world.

By NADAV SHEMER
cyber attack 311 R (photo credit: REUTERS)
cyber attack 311 R
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Israel Police Insp.-Gen. Yohanan Danino on Monday announced the creation of a 60-person unit to tackle cyber crime that will be funded with assistance from the Treasury.
Speaking at the annual International Conference on Homeland Security in Tel Aviv, Danino said that he participated in an Interpol conference in Rome last week in which cyber crime was identified as an issue that threatens the whole world.
“Terrorist groups and organized crime have a lot in common,” he explained.
“They [both] develop from local into global organizations, from hierarchical into networked organizations, and their level of sophistication is growing.”
Jürgen Stock, vice president of the German Federal Criminal Police Office, told the conference that it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify the perpetrators of cyber crime, and warned that the “increased networking of IT systems can very quickly lead to global epidemics with enormous financial impact.”
In Germany alone, attacks on the Internet are carried out every two seconds, Stock said, “but the motivations for such attacks remain unclear.”
For security authorities to keep pace with cyber criminals, a joint effort must be made by governmental and non-governmental actors at a national and international level, Stock declared.
He said that Europol’s new Cyber Crime Center and Interpol’s proposed Digital Crime Center would “fill the gaps that exist at a national level in many countries, as far as cyber crime is concerned.”
Also Monday, Jerusalem Venture Partners announced that it will create Israel’s first-ever private cyber security incubator as part of the chief scientist’s incubator program. JVP will establish the incubator in Beersheba in cooperation with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s technology transfer company.
It expects the incubator to begin operations as early as the beginning of 2013.
“The initiative comes in the wake of rising cyber threats and increasing attacks on critical infrastructure in Israel and around the world,” said JVP founder and chairman Erel Margalit, who is running in the Labor Party primaries ahead of the January elections.
“Israel’s leadership in the area of cyber security is a strategic asset for the country, and we can leverage it not only for security purposes, but also economically and socially. Establishing the Beersheba incubator alongside a social incubator and other cultural hotspots can create cultural and social change along with a thousand new jobs,” Margalit continued.