Police training to lift network-security skills

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://afr.com/articles/2003/07/20/1058639658399.html

Rachel Lebihan
July 21, 2003

The Australian Federal Police has signed a deal with Australia's
premier computer emergency organisation that will provide police
officers across the country with specialist training in network
security issues.

Australia's computer emergency response team, AusCERT, has developed a
course that will provide law enforcement officers with the skills to
conduct investigations of large computer-networked environments - such
as those belonging to internet service providers.

The AFP-based national high-technology crime centre piloted the course
in May and is now preparing to send its first group of officers on the
intensive, four-day training program.

AusCERT general manager Graham Ingram said the course was designed to
equip police officers with a level of confidence when conducting
large-scale security investigations.

"For most officers to walk into a large ISP, be confronted with racks
of equipment, and know how to run an investigation could be quite
daunting," Mr Ingram said.


"The course is designed to give reassurance and a basic understanding
of how it all works."

Mr Ingram described the course, which has now been acquired by the
AFP, as lab-based hands-on training that would cater for five or six
police officers at any given time.

He also said it would help the federal police, which in the past had
experienced a large turnover of highly qualified computer crime
investigators, to maintain an in-house knowledge base.

The director of the high-tech crime centre, Alastair MacGibbon, said
the driver behind the course development was recognition that
different skills were needed for different types of police
investigations.

Mr MacGibbon also said there was the need for some police officers to
"upskill" in the area of network-attack investigations.

"One of the things we're looking at in the high-tech crime centre is
how one draws the distinction between computer forensic training and
network expertise," Mr MacGibbon said. "We also wanted to pay for the
development of something that could then be marketed to other people.

"We see strong worth in these skills going to industry."

Mr MacGibbon said the cost of the course's development, about $20,000,
was "cheap to the point of obscenity".

He also said about four courses that would be scheduled over the next
12 months would be open to officers from all state and territory
police agencies - not just the high-tech crime team based in Canberra.

The federal police outlined the training contract in its submission to
a current parliamentary inquiry into cyber crime.

It also said it would subscribe to AusCERT's national
incident-reporting scheme.

As reported by The Australian Financial Review earlier this month, the
AusCERT reporting project enabled anyone to report security incidents
sourced from, or directed against, Australian networks.

The AFP would also participate in the Attorney-General's trusted
information-sharing network, which encouraged the private sector to
share information about attacks on information systems.



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