STE WILLIAMS

We’re in bed together, admit Intel Security, Trend Micro and NCA

The UK’s National Crime Agency has enlisted two leading security firms as part of a collaborative intelligence-sharing effort.

Intel Security and Trend Micro will be part of the “virtual threat teams” which will provide the police with intelligence on cybercrime threats in the UK and the rest of the world.

As both companies provide security for hundreds of millions of customers globally, their access to global trends in malware development is of immense value to the NCA’s Cyber Crime Unit.

Talking to the BBC last Friday, Andy Archibald, the head of that unit, acknowledged the collaboration which had developed between the law enforcement agency and the private sector over the last 10 months.

Rik Ferguson, Security Research veep at Trend Micro told The Register that although working partnerships had been established for a while, they were now being formalised across the board, not just with the NCA, but also at Europol and Interpol, with whom Trend Micro has a embedded researcher in Singapore.

From CryptoLocker and Gameover ZeuS, through to Beebone and RAMNIT, collaboration between security companies and law enforcement agencies has proven vital to protecting the public from cybercrime.

Talking to The Register, Raj Samani, CTO at Intel Security, said it was important to recognise the value of the collaborative approach, noting the success of such an approach was visible from the recent sentencing of Alex Yucel, the creator of Blackshades.

“Security firms have a far greater understanding of the threats in terms of what they see on a day-to-day basis,” Archibald told the BBC. “They have a massively important part to play in terms of understanding and identifying who and where the threat comes from.”

The ability to sense trends, recognise malware variants and comprehend the extent of the threat that the public faces would be inimitable if attempted in-house by the NCA, which does not have access to the expertise, nor the jurisdiction to investigate, when and where the companies are professionally engaged to provide.

When asked about notions of rivalry, Ferguson said they are perhaps “more apparent on the sales/marketing side of the business. Researchers really regard each other as allies, and the malicious actors and the malware is the enemy”.

Samani told The Register that such collaborations are essential when dealing with this new emerging area of crime. “That activity, of holding information and keeping it secret, it just doesn’t help.”

Intel Security has officially endorsed public-private partnerships on several occasions, and cited the Beebone takedown as “further evidence that only a combined response is capable of slowing down the ever-growing menace of cybercrime.”

“We have no choice,” said Samani. “We have to collaborate. This is the future of crime. You are not going to walk into a bank with a gun anymore. It’s dangerous. It’s easier to sit at home in your pajamas. And it is.” ®

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Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/29/intel_security_and_trend_micro_to_aid_ncas_cybersecurity_efforts_in_virtual_threat_team/

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