Cyber Crime Lab To Be Set Up In Visakhapatnam

We preciously wrote how Visakhapatnam has earned itself the reputation of being the cyber crime capital of the state. Now, the Director General of Police N Sambasiva Rao stated that a cyber crime lab will come up in the city. The lab will be able to detect various kinds of cyber crimes and have a cyber forensic cell too.

Inaugurating a seven day workshop being organised by the Department of Computer Science and Systems Engineering, Andhra University, he said post demonetisation, the country was moving towards cashless transactions, increasing the use of mobile and online transactions, and also increasing the potential of cyber crime. The workshop will address cyber security and ethical hacking.

The proposed lab will be attached to the Cyber Crime Police Station and the government is willing to set aside Rs 20-30 crore for this purpose. The lab will be the first of its kind in the state. The present police force is not equipped to deal with such crimes as the idea of having a cyber crime lab is a novel one to the state, even the country.

He pointed out that even in corporate organisations, on an average, it is only after 210 days that they even realise their networking has been hacked. Compared to them, the state is further behind. Amongst the 65,000 strong police force, not even 1% of them would be aware of the cyber side of crimes. So apart from setting up a cyber crime lab, the personnel need to be trained. That’s where IT experts from Andhra University come in.

Apart from setting up a cyber crime lab and training personnel, there will be an extensive campaign to educate the public about various forms of cyber crime. Visakhapatnam has the highest recorded rates of phishing, vishing, online card fraud and hacking. The AP police are moving towards digital surveillance and crime detection. Apart from CCTV surveillance in major cities, focus will also be put on digitalisation of fingerprints and facial recognition.