Businesses across England and Wales will be able to benefit from a free police-led monitoring tool and use it to improve their security and cyber resilience.
Named Police CyberAlarm, the tool monitors a business’ internet traffic by collecting metadata, and uses it to detect and provide regular reports of suspected malicious activity.
Initially introduced in June as a pilot in four regions across England and Wales, Police CyberAlarm has now been given the go ahead to roll out to the remaining regions over the next two months.
Commissioner of City of London Police, Ian Dyson, described Police CyberAlarm as “a great example of what can be achieved when policing and private industry work together”.
“We have been able to work with a partner to develop a tool which every business in England and Wales can benefit from,” he said, adding that businesses and organisations with a computer network can sign up to use the tool for free. The rollout of Police CyberAlarm is funded by the Home Office.
“We know that the average cost of a cyber attack to a small business is around £11,000 and we know that there are thousands of successful attacks every day. Cyber Security should be a priority for every single business no matter how big or small that business is. This is a police led project which businesses can trust. There is no catch to signing up, it is being offered for free and we want to get as many businesses as possible across England and Wales involved,” said Dyson.
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“The more members we have, the more data we get which will provide law enforcement with a much richer intelligence picture about the current and emerging threats businesses are facing. The data will also be presented back to members in the form of regular reports to help them take steps to improve their cyber security. I would urge businesses to sign up and take advantage of all Police CyberAlarm has to offer,” he added.
Businesses and organisations can register to use the tool by visiting the Police CyberAlarm website and install it using a VMWare Virtual Appliance or as a software installation on a Linux device, which requires CentOS 7 Minimal.
The data collected by Police CyberAlarm is accessible only to the Police but may be shared with other law enforcement agencies such as the National Crime Agency and the National Cyber Security Centre.
