May 16th, 2007
$10 million to fight cyber crime
Law makers in Washington introduced a bill Monday called the “Cyber-Security Enhancement Act of 2007″. Brian Krebs gives it good coverage. The bill would make additional funds available to the Secret Service, which is responsible for handling credit card theft in addition to their body guard duties, as well as the Justice Department and FBI. The $10 million for each department is way too little money to be effective if it is spread around the hundreds of FBI, Secret Service and AJ offices. But, if it is concentrated in hiring a few good investigators it could have a big pay back in terms of thwarted crimes.
In the meantime the real payback will come from international cooperation between law enforcement agencies. The G8 countries actually began talking amongst their respective cyber crime units in 1997. Unfortunately it appears that cyber crime and high tech crime cooperation got derailed post 9/11 when the Lyon group that meets three times a year added terrorism to their purview. Either the G8 nations are very secretive about their levels of cooperation or, as I suspect, they are not doing much to further the fight against cyber criminals.
The new law, if passed, is going to help somewhat by beefing up definitions and penalties and even the additional allocations will have positive results. But cyber crime does not recognize national boundaries. We will not be able to combat cyber crime until jurisdictional barriers are brought down.
Richard Stiennon is an industry consultant. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
