Government to give police agencies £63m boost to battle cybercrime

The Government has said police agencies are to receive £63m over the next four years to help fight the growing problem of cyber crime.

The money will be drawn from the £650m pot allocated last October for the National Security Strategy, which will be developed to fight online attacks against the UK. At that time, Prime Minister David Cameron said: "The United Kingdom faces a complex array of threats from myriad sources."

The latest announcement, made by the Home Secretery Theresa May at an informal meeting of G6 ministers from the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Poland, is the first indication of how some of this money will be allocated.

A Government representative said it wanted to "build on the expertise" of current UK agencies dealing with cyber crime.

This would mainly comprise the Police Central eCrime Unit (PCeC), the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) the Serious Fraud Office and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop).

How the £63m will be divided between them is not clear. We were told by the Home Office that the finer details had yet to be worked out, but the agencies won't necessarily be in exactly the same format that they are currently in.

Soca and Ceop are expected to become part of a new FBI-style, National Crime Agency. There have also been talks that possibly the PCeC, which is run by the Metropolitan Police Force and the SFO will be integrated into the new agency

"This proposed new funding will be used to develop the UK's overall response to cyber crime. The Government is determined to build an effective law enforcement response to the cyber crime threat building upon the existing expertise within SOCA and the Met Police Central e-Crime Unit.

"More details of the funding allocation will be made public in due course."

The majority of the £650m, however, is expected to be spent on setting up a UK Defence Cyber Operations Group within the Ministry of Defence and the Government said that the UK would proactively pursue "cyber alliance" with allies especially the United States.

Further announcements are expected to be made in the spring.