[ISN] Police training to lift network-security skills

From: InfoSec News (isnat_private)
Date: Mon Jul 21 2003 - 01:29:13 PDT

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    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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