Rising to the Proliferation of Cybercrime Challenging LEAs Across Europe

Abstract

Law enforcement agencies (LEAs) face serious challenges in addressing the growing wave of cybercrime. They have limited human and financial resources to push back against this wave. Their tools and technologies are often a generation behind those of cybercriminals and terrorists on the dark web, deep web and dark nets. LEAs have to operate with ethical, data protection and social constraints that are meaningless to cybercriminals. They also have to respect national borders that don’t exist in cyberspace. This article briefly refers to the economic and social impacts of cybercrime, before discussing some of the principal challenges facing LEAs in responding to those impacts. We then focus on the EU-funded CC-DRIVER project, which is helping LEAs to address those challenges. Finally, we draw some conclusions on the near-term future of responses to cybercrime.