With cybercriminals getting smarter and more diverse in their activities, there is an urgent need for practitioners in the criminal justice and corporate sectors worldwide to share knowledge, identify issues and develop systems and strategies to combat this menace.
It is to enhance the global partnership to fight crime in this borderless virtual world that the Vancouver-based international Society for the Policing of Cyberspace (POLCYB) is once again holding an international conference, this time in Bangkok, Thailand, from Nov 5-9.
This will be the second time that POLCYB, which started as a non-profit organisation in 1999, is holding its yearly international meet outside Canadian borders. Its first venture offshore was in Guangzhou in China in 2005.
POLCYB's mission is to enhance the develop global partnerships to prevent and combat cyberspace crimes as well as to establish a network for international criminal justice and corporate sectors to share knowledge, information, and resources.
It also wants to hold educational forums to enhance the understanding of the work done by the international criminal justice and corporate agencies and provide public education on information security.
The society is hoping to attract delegates from Southeast Asia as well this time. At the last meeting, delegates came from the US, Canada, Europe and South and East Asia.
Says Ms L C Yeo, 55, from the School of Computing & Academic Studies in the British Columbia Institute of Technology, who is supporting POLCYB's efforts: "The society is hoping to attract delegates from the Asean region. People from law enforcement such as cybercrime cops; from the legal profession, such as cybercrime prosecutors, information officers, corporate computer security officers and those in information technology will find this conference valuable."
Researchers and academics, senior management executives, even judges and risk management officers would also gain from the conference," she adds.
The meet's theme this year is: "International Policing and Policy Perspectives on Countering Cybercrime."
Among the issues to be discussed will be the challenges in the collection and application of digital evidence, a study of current international cybercrime trends and threats, data protection, privacy and identity management.
E-money laundering in the financial sectors will also be examined as well as a study into how to disrupt international organised cybercrime.
Other topics this conference will tackle: Child exploitation in cyberspace, pharmaceutical crime on the Internet, intellectual property abuses, spam and phishing, child exploitation, as well as online trading and banking.
Experts will also speak on the strategies for counter cyber intelligence, protection of industrial infrastructure and how to develop communication protocols to build "Trusted Communities."
