Key Areas of Ongoing Work

Despite the associated costs in delivering technology required to tackle the threat of Cyber enabled crime, balanced against the budget landscape, it remains the ambition and priority of the PDWP to deliver a variety of products and services in a number of project areas, during the 2023/24 financial year.

With a key focus on the strands of Prevent and Pursue and with a partnership approach at the heart, the Programme is prioritising work in the following areas:

Training and Capability:  This project enables us to transform Police Scotland's capacity and capability to respond to threats.  The project will review and implement a full suite of Cyber Training Products from basic to advanced levels. 

ISO 17025:  Achieving ISO 17025 accreditation for digital forensics was outlined in the Police Scotland Cyber Strategy as key activity for the PDWP. The project will enhance Police Scotland’s existing digital forensic capability and obtain formal, internationally recognised accreditation for the digital forensic service. Work on this has commenced with the Digital Forensic Hub at Muggiemoss, Aberdeen, to be completed within the 2023/24 financial year.

Digital Forensic Re design: Digital Forensics (DF) Re-Design is a project aligned to a DF service that all of policing relies upon and is vital to reducing harm and protecting the public. It is acknowledged that there is a requirement to review and rebuild the service to meet current and future demands. The key objective will be to design and develop a future focussed operating model for DF where the scope of the project will incorporate people, processes, technology and estates. As such, the Programme have identified two areas in support of this future model. DF Vans, which would be an extension and improvement on the current in force capability and Digital Detection Dogs, which are specially trained to sniff out digital devices; including mobile phones, laptops and sim cards.  This would be a new capability for Police Scotland, bringing about additional capability to DF investigations across the country.

Critical Issues: This project aims to address the immediate threat, risk and harm from Online Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation (OCSAE) and the safeguarding and protecting of vulnerable people from online crime and abuse, through the delivery of tactical solution and longer term strategic change. The current focus of PDWP is working to introduce a solution for the Internet Investigations Unit (IIU) in the form of an analytics platform, which can be used to improve workflow, enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency in terms of the deployment of our people across Police Scotland, whilst seeking to improve their wellbeing. The introduction of software will ensure Police Scotland is flexible, adaptable, resilient and able to respond to shifting threats.  The software will provide search facilities across approximately 20 systems, identifying language and patterns which will highlight higher risk cases faster than the current manual systems. With referrals in OCSAE increasing 511.2% between 2015 to 2021, this increased capability will improve our response to this, however given the scale and threat posed, we need to continue to embrace the technology available to help target and prevent these types of crime type, appreciating that the associated costs and the recruitment and training of specialist officers and staff.

Cyber Futures: This work stream focuses on three of the ‘4Ps’, Protect, Prepare, and Prevent to fit with the overall Programme approach and in support of Police Scotland Strategic Objectives. The adoption of a public health approach to aid a reduction in cybercrime and will ensure partners from a range of sectors can positively influence and support our objectives. Examples on work ongoing in this thematic area include:

Fraud: Fraud is synonymous with online crime and over the last 5 years this has seen a 68% increase, equating to an average of 1500 crimes per month, 95% of which is online. ACC Andy Freeburn, as Chair of the Strategic Fraud Governance Group with partners from Scottish Government, the banking and financial sector and the Scottish Business Resilience Centre (SBRC) is exploring the concept of at a multi-agency triage hub, to ensure that the public and private sector work more collaboratively and consistently in this area.

In recent months this has seen the joint production of the “Little Book of Big Scams” aimed at increasing the public’s awareness and preparedness for scams within the UK, messaging of which has been reinforced in the lead up to the festive period. In terms of the wider UK approach, Police Scotland are also participating in the development of Fraud and Cyber Crime Reporting and Analysis Service (FCCRAS) formerly known as Action Fraud. This is being designed to with the following collective objectives of both the victim and law enforcement:

- Improved victim experience and satisfaction,

- Lead to criminal justice outcomes,

- Prevent crime and reduce harm,

- Contribute to an improved understanding of the threat from serious and organised crime,

- Improve systems inter-operability and align with national programmes.

Scottish Cyber Co-ordination Centre (SC3): Police Scotland is a key partner in this multi-agency project which will establish the Scottish Cyber Co-ordination Centre, a central coordination function for cyber intelligence sharing, exercising, early warning, best practice, and national incident response and recovery for Scotland. The concept was of SC3 was announced during Cyber Scotland Week in February 2022 and will seek to become a recognised, authoritative and collaborative function to combat the accelerating threat of cyber-attack to Scotland, its businesses and people.