Cybersecurity giant Trend Micro has signed a landmark memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) in a deal which will see the two co-operate on cases from start to finish as part of a ‘virtual team’.
The organizations have worked together extensively in the past, but up until now any collaboration has been done in an ad-hoc manner.
The MoU will see the formation of a cross-organizational virtual team, with Trend Micro passing on relevant information on cybercrime attacks, and its Forward Looking Threat Research (FTR) team co-operating with the NCA to utilize shared intelligence.
The NCA, formerly known as SOCA, will benefit from the expertise of the vendor’s 1200-strong global TrendLabs research team, and the power of its Smart Protection Network, which analyzes over 15TB of threat data, and blocks over 250 million threats each day, Trend Micro said.
EMEA manager of the FTR, Robert McArdle, told Infosecurity by email that, unlike regular crime, law enforcers don’t necessarily have all the tools at their disposal to conduct effective investigations into cybercrime.
“A lot of the key pieces of evidence and intelligence needed for a case will reside in the logs of security companies, ISPs and hosting providers. What that means is that it is incredibly difficult for agencies like the NCA to successfully carry out investigations on their own, without the help of private industry partners,” he added.
“Trend Micro’s Forward Looking Threat Research team (FTR), is an example of such a partner – a team working hard to leverage the threat intelligence data Trend Micro possess and working with LEA partners to ultimately bring the criminals behind cybercrime to justice.”
McArdle claimed the FTR and NCA would work “hand-in-hand” to solve cybercrime cases affecting the UK.
Intel Security has also announced a partnership with the NCA, although it’s not thought that the security giant will be working in a virtual team with the agency on complete cases.