Microsoft forges partnerships to fight soaring cybercrime

Thursday, 20 February 2014 00:01 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

By Sarah Hannan Microsoft Sri Lanka yesterday partnered with local IT stakeholders, Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) and Sri Lanka Computer Emergency Readiness Team Coordination Centre (Sri Lanka CERT CC) to fight soaring numbers of cybercrime. According to Sri Lanka CERT CC, from the time the organisation was established in 2007, the number of reported cybercrime incidents has climbed rapidly from 49 to around 200 incidents reported each day, according to Sri Lanka CERT CC Chief Executive Officer Lal Dias. Last year Microsoft had released a Computer Security Study with a focus on South-East Asia, which established that two out of three new branded computers installed with pirated software at the point of sale were infected with dangerous malware, which were designed to cause serious vulnerabilities.

“Increase of cyber threats and cyber crime incidents has become a negative factor towards the growth of ICT and Internet and there is a need to address the root cause. The Government has taken many policy initiatives to address this problem by enacting the Computer Crimes Act No. 24 of 2007,” ICTA Director Legal Jayantha Fernando noted. “Microsoft Sri Lanka is committed to increase its contributions to counter cyber crime, by promoting the benefits of Clean IT and healthy IT business practices around Software Asset Management (SAM), in partnership with important IT stakeholders and the government in the country. Microsoft not only offers strong and robust IT products and cloud solutions, but also works towards strengthening the capacity of law enforcement bodies to combat cyber crime and reduce software piracy,” commented Microsoft Asia-Pacific, Japan and Singapore Regional Director of IP and Cyber crime Keshav Dhakad. Microsoft recently announced the launch of its state-of-the-art cyber crime centre billed as a centre of excellence to advance the global fight against cybercrime. Microsoft’s global Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) composed of an international team of lawyers, investigators, analysts, cyber forensic experts, is part of the cybercrime centre and collaborate with industry partners, customers and law enforcement to help lead the fight against cybercrime, in particular attacking and disrupting malicious software crimes, (botnet operations), Intellectual Property, piracy and technology-facilitated child exploitation such as child pornography.