Courses in ‘e-crime’ fighting for police

SCOTTISH police officers are to receive specialist academic training from cyber security experts in a bid to step up their fight against cyberbullying and other online crimes.

A course created by Edinburgh Napier University for Police Scotland will teach officers cutting-edge techniques in tackling online crime. Picture: TSPL

A course created by Edinburgh Napier University for Police Scotland will teach officers cutting-edge techniques in tackling online crimes ranging from the hacking of large corporate websites to teenage bullying online.

The move comes after the death of a 17-year-old boy from Dunfermline amid claims he threw himself from the Forth Road Bridge in July after falling victim to a scam on Skype in which users are blackmailed.

He was told that recordings of conversations he had had with a girl in the US would be shared with friends and family unless he paid money.

“In light of recent tragedies highlighted within Scotland with regards to ­cyber-enabled crime we need to skill-up police services in Scotland to tackle this new phenomenon in crime investigation,” said Detective Inspector Eamonn Keane, from Police Scotland’s e-crime unit.

The course, which has been a year in the planning, will be led by the university’s digital and advanced
security experts and aims to improve the prevention and detection of crime and the ability to quickly gather electronic information.

Professor Bill Buchanan, director of the Centre for
Distributed Computing, Networks and Security at Napier, said: “Scotland needs to develop these professionals in order to mitigate the risks of the internet.”