The Australian federal government has launched a new cybercrime centre backed by federal law enforcement to deal with ongoing cyberattacks, online scams, and criminal activities on the darknet.
The AU$89 million (US$66 million) Joint Policing Cybercrime Coordination Centre (JPC3) will be based at the Australian Federal Police’s (AFP) headquarters in the state of New South Wales and is the latest announcement under the Morrison government’s $1.67 billion Cyber Security Strategy.
“During the pandemic, cybercrime became one of the fastest-growing and most prolific forms of crime committed against Australians,” Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said in a statement.
“Using far-reaching Commonwealth legislation and high-end technical capabilities, the AFP’s new cybercrime centre will aggressively target cyber threats, shut them down, and bring offenders to justice,” she said.
“Our National Plan will support industries to grow online, build wider confidence in the digital economy, ensure safer online spaces for children, and better support law enforcement to bring to justice those who would break our laws.”
The National Plan to Combat Cyber Crime was agreed to by the federal and state governments as a unified approach to dealing with increasing incidents of ransomware attacks, online scams, drug trafficking in the darknet, online bullying, and the sharing of child exploitation material.
In its National Plan, the Home Affairs Department identified two main categories of cybercrime that cause “wide-ranging harms to its victims and broader society.”
The first is “cyber-dependent crimes” that only came into existence as the digital world matured and saw criminals hack into networks to steal sensitive personal information to use in ransomware attacks or extortion.
The other form, “cyber-enabled crimes,” involves the shifting of traditional crimes online.
For example, Australia’s consumer watchdog found that over the course of 2021, it received around 700 scam reports per day, costing Australians about AU$870,000 (US$643,000) daily.
While in 2020, the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation revealed it received over 21,000 reports of online child exploitation.
The cost of containing and dealing with cyber threats is also increasing, with businesses having to spend more to ensure they stay protected.
“Ransomware has been, and will continue to be, a plague on organisations and insurers alike, across all industries and segments—equally challenging for small to medium enterprises, as well as large corporates and the public-government sector,” a report from consultancy AON said.
