Current and Past Activities

The issue of cybercrime has been a focus of UNICRI since 2004, and after years of experience, UNICRI now possesses the skills and know-how to analyze trends concerning cybercrime in its many forms. UNICRI is supported by an extensive, specialized and trusted contact network consisting of private enterprises, international organizations and NGOs, academic institutions, law enforcement bodies, governmental bodies, and other UN agencies.

A sampling of the Emerging Crimes Unit's past activities with respect to cybersecurity and technology misuse can be found below:

Impact of Cybercrime on Business and Economy: UNICRI, with the support of Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca, has devoted its efforts to raise awareness regarding the cyber threats that can affect the economies of Italy and Europe, with a focus on small medium enterprises (SMEs).

Combating Cybercrime- Tools and Capacity Building for. Emerging Economies: UNICRI contributed to the World Bank project “Combatting Cybercrime: Tools and Capacity Building for Emerging Economies”, aimed at building capacity among policy-makers, legislators, public prosecutors and investigators, and civil society in developing countries in the policy, legal and criminal justice aspects of the enabling environment to combat cybercrime. (Electronic version will be available soon).

SECURED – SECURity at the network Edge, funded by the European Commission Seventh Framework Programme (FP7): the SECURED project proposes an innovative architecture to achieve protection from Internet threats by offloading execution of security applications into a programmable device at the edge of the network such as a home gateway or an enterprise router.

COURAGE – Cybercrime and cyberterrOrism (E)Uropean Research AGEnda, funded by the European Commission Seventh Framework Programme (FP7): the COuRAGE consortium will deliver a measured, comprehensive, relevant research agenda for Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism (CC/CT) guided by the knowledge and experience of the highly experienced and exceptionally qualified consortium (17 partners, 12 countries) and Advisory Board members (14 organisations including EUROPOL, JRC and ERA).

Information Sharing and Public-Private Partnerships: Perspectives and Proposals: Sustainable cybersecurity strategies require joint flexible responses to threats and thorough, validated, judicial practices. Current debates tend to juxtapose immediate responses to cyberattacks and legislative efforts to combat overall cybercrime as an either/or dichotomy. Through this Info-Sharing project, UNICRI, is looking into national and international established channels of communication to highlight the complementary nature of legislation and security. The project will examine in particular detail the ways in which policy regulation and immediate responses to threats can interact in the sectors of banking, transport and critical infrastructure. This project has been realized with the support of GIAC Security Essentials (GSEC), in collaboration with European Electronic Crime Task Force (EECTF).

The aim of the project is to map the current landscape of cybersecurity information sharing- and the issues thereof- and to highlight the complimentary nature of legislation and security. The project will focus on the needs and demands of the banking, transport and critical infrastructure industries.

Child Online Protection Initiative: Protecting children online is a global challenge, which requires a global approach. While many efforts to improve child online protection are already under way, their reach has been more national than global. UNICRI has collaborated with ITU Child Online Protection initiative to create an international collaborative network and promote online safety of children around the world.

Hackers Profiling Project:the Hacker’s Profiling Project (HPP) started back in 2004. The HPP aimed to improve the response to ICT crime and the transnational organised crime groups that may be involved in it by outlining the criminal profiles of the different types of hackers, with particular emphasis on their possible involvement in transnational organised crime activities and cyber-terrorism. Through a better understanding of hackers, HPP facilitated the prevention and countering of ICT crime and improved the operational methods that may lead to the identification of cybercriminals. The first output of the project was the publication of the book “Profiling Hackers. The Science of Criminal Profiling as Applied to the World of Hacking”, Taylor & Francis, which came out on 12 December 2008 (1st Italian edition was published by Apogeo in February 2007). While many years have passed since its inception, UNICRI continues to collect relevant resources and materials on the topic.