Microsoft said Thursday that it had set up a facility on its Redmond, Wash., camps where members of Microsoft, other businesses, and law enforcement can team together to take on cybercrime.
Microsoft already employs nearly 100 attorneys, investigators, technical experts and forensic analysts to fight counterfeit software, as well as halt the spread of child pornography, click fraud, and other online threats.
“The Microsoft Cybercrime Center is where our experts come together with customers and partners to focus on one thing: keeping people safe online,” said David Finn, associate general counsel of the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit, in a statement.
There’s no indication that the center will be any more effective than working online, via the various “white hat” forces drawn up against “black hat” hackers. Companies like Microsoft and others already work closely with the FBI, Interpol, and others to try and keep the Interne safer. Still, the secured center on the Microsoft campus is a formal statement of Microsoft’s commitment to help solve the problem, said Noboru Nakatani, executive director of the Interpol Global Complex for Innovation, in a video introducing the center.
Techniques used to in the fight will include SitePrint, which allows the mapping of online organized crime networks; PhotoDNA, a leading anti-child-pornography technology; cyberforensics, a new investigative capability that detects global cybercrime, including online fraud and identity theft; and cyberthreat intelligence from Microsoft’s botnet takedown operations.
“Cyberdefense is a team sport,” said John Boles of the FBI’s cybercrime division. “We have to be involved. We all have to work together.”