Government to allocate £50m to cyber-crime unit

The National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) has announced that a National Computer Crime Unit will be a reality by April 2001, with funding in excess of £50m expected from the government.

As reported on silicon.com in January, £337,000 has been given to a taskforce headed up by NCIS to investigate how the crime unit will work. Currently NCIS says half the money from government will be spent on a central administration investigating crime on the internet, with the other half to be spent on training police forces to deal better with cyber-crime.

The unit will comprise representatives from NCIS, the National Crime Squad and Customs and Excise, amongst other agencies. Presently the unit is in a consultation phase, gathering best practice from UK police forces.