THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In a bid to build the capacity to deal with sophisticated cyber financial crimes involving cryptocurrency, the state police have begun training 120 officers in that domain. The training began on Monday and it is being arranged by the newly formed Cyber Investigation Unit with the assistance of the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) and IIT Kharagpur.
This is for the first time the department is building a dedicated team to fight hi-tech cyber financial crimes involving digital currency. Of 120 officers, 40 are inspectors, while the rest are sub-inspectors. The officers handpicked will be given five days of hands-on training. Apart from cryptocurrency analysis, they will also be given training in the newly drafted Loan App Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), Investment-type fraud SOP, and the amended IT Rules.
The officers are hand-picked in such a manner that two inspectors and four sub-inspectors from each district will undergo training in the basic module. Cyberdome Kochi is handling the research in cryptocurrency. They have combined about four open-source tools to form a user interface, which will be used for training. The department is planning to continue making use of open-source tools as the imported tools are quite expensive.
The department earlier had plans to purchase a paid tool from Israel that costs Rs 50 lakh. The yearly update was expected to cost `20 lakh each. Apart from the cost factor, what got the police decision-makers hooked to the open-source tools was that it had more room for skill development of the users.
“The department had received administration sanction from the government to purchase the system. But then the decision was rolled back and it was decided to go ahead with the open-source tools,” said a source. The department had earlier provided training on the subjects to the senior hands of the cyber investigation wing.
Once the training is completed, the cyber investigation wing will arrange training on new topics for fresh batches.
“We are focusing on capacity-building. We want to create a band of officers specialized in different topics so that we always have enough manpower to address various types of offences,” said a senior officer.