Obama outlines strategy to combat transnational cybercrime

President Obama unveiled his plans to combat what the United States is calling "Transnational Organized Crime" (TOC) in a paper released by the White House this morning.

The document is called "Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime" and focuses primarily on encouraging more international cooperation to target organized criminals dealing in smuggling people, smuggling drugs, committing acts of terror and online financial crime.

The focus of the cybercrime component appears to be better information sharing, investigation and cooperation among nations to investigate the use of the internet and technology by organized criminals. The President acknowledges that the US must do more, but that with the distributed nature of these crimes around the world it can only be effective if governments work together internationally.

The strategy states:

"TOC networks are increasingly involved in cybercrime, which costs consumers billions of dollars annually, threatens sensitive corporate and government computer networks, and undermines worldwide confidence in the international financial system."

Additionally it mentions that estimates indicate the online fraud perpetrated by Central European crime syndicates accounts for over $1 billion a year against US citizens alone. The US Secret Service estimates total online financial crimes against US interests amount to billions of dollars in losses per year.

The White House acknowledges one of the failures in cracking down on cybercrime is the lack of properly trained computer forensic investigators. With the staggering number of scams, frauds and online breaches committed each month they need to dramatically increase the number of skilled staff who can investigate these crimes.

Interestingly they included some statistics on what they accomplished in fiscal year 2010. The US Secret Service arrested 1,217 suspects for cybercrime related violations that were responsible for $507 million in losses.