Interview with Assistant Commissioner Peter O’Doherty City of London Police


– Lead for Fraud & Cyber Crime continued.


Is a cyber crime report handled in the same way as a fraud report?


Yes, cyber crimes come into the Action Fraud website or contact centre and the NFIB determines where to send it next it next. For cyber crime, there are three possible layers where an investigation could take place:


• Low cyber crime – will be allocated to the local police force cyber team, for example hacking someone’s social media account


• Middle complexity – to the regional cyber team (in the Regions)


• Complex, sophisticated, high harm – eg wannacry on NHS go to the National Cyber Crime unit (NCCU).


It’s worth mentioning that crime can come into Action Fraud or the NCCU – these groups are connected and share information on crimes and decide where it is investigated. The NCCU is system lead for cyber – a national agency under government.


There is also the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) – part GCHQ, who lead on the incident response for major attacks on critical national infrastructure. The NCSC and NCU respond together to an incident – and also provide awareness campaigns and education.


There are many organisations providing information on cyber crime; can you highlight some key ones?


There are currently a number of institutions and agencies like the London Cyber Resilience Centre giving advice to business. The Cyber Resilience Centres – hosted by police, working in partnership with universities and business – provide cyber crime prevention services to SMEs. Plus other agencies like the Cyber Defence Alliance, a specific service for banks, and the Global Cyber alliance, which looks at global trends and pushes out prevention messages.


Although it is good to have all these organisations with some great people working in this area, I recognise it can be confusing! Together, we are working on coordinating these and making it clearer where to go for advice. We want clear demarcation between what agency pushes out messages when, and not have a duplication of messages. Fraudsters are becoming increasingly sophisticated about making their scams look genuine. We need to be clear and consistent in the messages we put out.


15 © CITY SECURITY MAGAZINE – WINTER 2022 www.citysecuritymagazine.com


Lastly, in brief, can you list some the key new initiatives and developments in cyber and fraud to watch out for (and perhaps the topic of future articles)?


There is lots of work going to improve our response. Cyber crime and fraud are increasingly a priority for government and we are increasing capacity across policing to help increase and improve response. Some key initiatives to look out for this autumn are:


• The new fraud strategy being launched this autumn – I have worked in this space for 13 years and currently there is the highest level of interest from government


• Every local policing and crime plan now specifically mentions fraud


• The police funding in the latest spending review has increased to enable us to increase capacity in this area


•We are launching a fraud app for police officers, which provides support on where to report fraud and cyber crime and explains threats. We want every cop to understand crypto; so many crimes involve blockchain


• The Police Cyber Alarm is available to all SMEs – it captures and monitors all external threats trying to attack businesses. Captures are sent to a central point and analysts look at trends and typologies and send back to business with advice on what to do


• We have cyber dogs who can sniff out PCs and servers


•We have cyber vans we can deploy to an attack to coordinate the policing response


• In our people strategy, we are looking at ways to recruit, retain and train – people go to work in industry for more money.


Andrea Berkoff Editor


City Security magazine


Operation Broadway partnership


peration Broadway launched in 2014 as a multi-agency partnership between the City of London Police, City of London Trading Standards, National Trading Standards, the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, the Financial Conduct Authority, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and the Insolvency Service.


O


Criminals who run fraudulent investment companies often set up business addresses in the Square Mile to boost their credibility and, by doing so, pose a significant risk to the City of London’s reputation.


Operation Broadway was set up to mitigate the problem through building partnerships with office providers. The team visits business premises that have been identified as being used by fraudulent companies based on reports made to Action Fraud and other partners.


The team aims to disrupt fraudulent companies by physically moving them on from the premises, shutting down telephone lines and websites associated with the company, and working with other agencies to issue consumer alerts.


In October 2022, the National Economic Crime Centre led a two-week period of intensification. During this period, the Operation Broadway team visited over 40 addresses in and around the City of London, submitted 57 website suspensions and engaged with communities.


If you have any intelligence around investment fraud, please contact the Operation Broadway team by emailing: broadway@cityoflondon.police.uk.


Information can be shared anonymously.


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