Microsoft has opened a cybercrime centre to combat global computer connected crime. The Microsoft Cybercrime Centre is a 16,800-square foot, high-security facility within the firm’s Redmond campus. The facility brings together security engineers, digital forensics experts and legal experts to help clean the internet of malware, botnets, intellectual property theft and technology-facilitated child exploitation among other crimes.
Cybercrime is acknowledged to be getting worse by Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit chief David Finn. At the opening of the new centre, Finn said Microsoft wants to make the internet “safer for everyone” and described the workings of the new facility; “The Microsoft Cybercrime Center is where our experts come together with customers and partners to focus on one thing: keeping people safe online”. The firm’s mixed approach’ which will use previously proven effective methods such as “massive data gathering and analysis, gumshoe detective work, high-level diplomacy and creative lawyering,” will hopefully be able to make a big impact.
The new centre includes a separate and secure location for third parties to collaborate with Microsoft on current areas of focus or cybercrime hotspots. In this separate wing of the centre cybersecurity experts from around the world can work alongside Microsoft experts for an indefinite period of time, as required by the case at hand.
Noboru Nakatani, executive director of the INTERPOL Global Complex for Innovation praised the Microsoft initiative, “The security community needs to build on its coordinated responses to keep pace with today’s cybercriminals. The Microsoft Cybercrime Centre will be an important hub in accomplishing that task more effectively and proactively.”
With the growth of more sophisticated attacks though distributed means such as botnets it is hoped that the hub created by Microsoft to fight cybercrime could help create the coordinated response required to avoid futile whack-a-mole reactions to criminals on the internet. Let’s look forward to some positive headlines coming from the Microsoft DCU’s latest initiative, with some great results against the bad guys in the coming months.
