Do Cops Have The Capability To Tackle The Menace Of Cyber Crime?

Today, as the menace of cyber crime grows, top brass of police forces of various states as well as of Union territories is claiming that their teams are quite capable to tackle the growing problem of cyber crime. On the other hand, cyber experts and victims of these crimes think otherwise.

Renowned cyber expert Pawan Duggal told BW Policeworld that police forces need many things to do before they could claim about expertize to prevent or detect cybercrimes. He said that cops do not have basic tools to  tackle cybercrime nor do they have adequate training. Policemen posted with the cyber cells also seconded his assertion regarding scarcity of tools. Cops told us that they get required tools after years of their requisition and by then those tools get obsolete in the cyber world.

On the other hand, police officers are saying they have the required expertize. Lt. Governor of Delhi, Anil Baijal, in a recently held meeting with the senior officers of the Delhi Police, stressed the need of ability in combating cybercrime. Special Commissioner of Delhi Police Dipendra Pathak said that Lt. Governor was briefed about the various issues and the multi-level structure including cyber teams/cells from Police Station and Centralized Cybercrime Units. The presentation covered various aspects like gathering of actionable intelligence, forensics, investigation and prosecution as well as awareness and training programmes. Lt. Governor was also apprised that Delhi Police is actively monitoring and working on cracking of different malwares like ransomware, bitcoin thefts, frauds/cheating etc. In addition to this new areas like network forensics, cloud forensics, advance mobile forensics, etc. are being taken up.

Mumbai Police officers cite a case to prove their point regarding their ability to combat cybercrime. They informed about a young hacker, who tried very hard to break into the main server of a financial institution. The concerned financial institution had used a separate server for financial transaction with extra security layer and used another server for its website.  Mumbai police wad able to nab the hacker after finding traces of his lead from the web server, where he left it. 

After considering both aspects, we may conclude that much has been done and still more things have to be done by the police forces to combat cybercrime.