The national police, Rigspolitiet, and the public prosecutor’s office are establishing a cybercrime centre to fight, analyse and prevent IT crime, Jyllands-Posten newspaper reports.
The decision arrives after new statistics show an explosion in cybercrime, with a 77 percent increase in cases of data fraud, and a 25 percent increase in cases of economic crime since 2012.
With specialist tools, the centre will also help teach police forces how to better approach online thieves, conmen and hackers.
READ MORE: Police warn young people against cybercrime
Crime going online
“The police’s efforts need to be developed because more and more crime is going online,” Justice Minister Karen Hækkerup (S) told Jyllands-Posten.
“We all have smartphones and shop online. But people end up being the victims of identity theft or another form of online abuse. It means that there is a new arena where the police need to be prepared, because criminals are adept at taking advantage of opportunities,” Hækkerup said.
The centre will both protect from large co-ordinated hacking attacks against Danish businesses, organisations and public registers, and also smaller-scale crime such as credit card fraud, identity theft and the distribution of child pornography.
READ MORE: Internet anonymity programs might be banned
Increasing police capacity
Jens Henrik Højberg, the head of Rigspolitiet, said that the cybercrime centre will be a focal point for expertise in the area of data crime.
“Some cases of online fraud initially look small, but once we have the right systems we might be able to see if they are connected to large and organised cases that have targeted hundreds of Danes. The centre will give us the capacity to make us present everywhere that crime happens, so criminals know that we are also patrolling the internet, not just the streets,” Højberg told Jyllands-Posten.
The cybercrime centre will have up to 100 employees, of which 50 will come from Rigspolitiet’s existing IT crimes centre, NITES, which will be absorbed within the new centre.
