All police to get training to combat hacker threats

Centrex, the UK's Central Police Training and Development Authority, is running the online course as part of an initiative to better educate police officers in area of cybercrime.

"There are 130,000 police officers out there for us to train," said Nigel Jones, head of hi-tech crime training at Centrex. "This is primarily for new recruits so that they can get this knowledge early on, otherwise they can go thirty years without ever getting a handle on IT.

The course will teach police officers about the threats posed by online criminals and how to conduct basic computer forensic examinations. It will also help them gain an understanding of cybercrime.

The first courses, funded through the Centre for Applied Learning Technology, will be underway by early March.

The news comes a day after the Metropolitan Police Specialist Crime Directorate announced plans to run e-security seminars for IT professionals. At £500 a head the seminars will raise funds for, amongst other things, training and equipment.

For a full report on the exact implications of this, and why the Met feels the need to raise funds, look out for February's print edition of SC Magazine.

www.centrex.police.uk