Understanding the Expertise Required by Law Enforcement Investigating Cybercrime: An Exploration of Social Engineering Techniques

<p>Cybercrime represents a significant threat for the 21st century, a threat that traditional methods of policing cannot adequately manage. Consequently, new ways of policing utilising specialised teams have been implemented to address cybercrime proactively. One method of policing that has been relatively unexplored within academic literature is covert online investigations, wherein law enforcement creates false identities to interact with offenders from. Existing research has not comprehensively explored what tactics, techniques, and procedures law enforcement use when conducting these investigations. Accordingly, selection and training of employees presents unique challenges. Therefore, this study aims to provide a detailed evaluation of what skills are needed by law enforcement. This information can then inform future training and selection. This study examines in-depth semi-structured interviews with eight New Zealand Police investigators using Applied Cognitive Task Analysis. Data was analysed using thematic analysis. Results revealed three themes with 18 sub-themes. The first theme explored operational pre-planning, the second theme explored social engineering techniques used to gather information, and the third theme explored the wide-ranging external considerations. Finally, the discussion outlines the implications for theories of social engineering, applications for law enforcement training and recruitment, and potential future research opportunities within social engineering and police psychology.</p>

Understanding the Expertise Required by Law Enforcement Investigating Cybercrime: An Exploration of Social Engineering Techniques

<p>Cybercrime represents a significant threat for the 21st century, a threat that traditional methods of policing cannot adequately manage. Consequently, new ways of policing utilising specialised teams have been implemented to address cybercrime proactively. One method of policing that has been relatively unexplored within academic literature is covert online investigations, wherein law enforcement creates false identities to interact with offenders from. Existing research has not comprehensively explored what tactics, techniques, and procedures law enforcement use when conducting these investigations. Accordingly, selection and training of employees presents unique challenges. Therefore, this study aims to provide a detailed evaluation of what skills are needed by law enforcement. This information can then inform future training and selection. This study examines in-depth semi-structured interviews with eight New Zealand Police investigators using Applied Cognitive Task Analysis. Data was analysed using thematic analysis. Results revealed three themes with 18 sub-themes. The first theme explored operational pre-planning, the second theme explored social engineering techniques used to gather information, and the third theme explored the wide-ranging external considerations. Finally, the discussion outlines the implications for theories of social engineering, applications for law enforcement training and recruitment, and potential future research opportunities within social engineering and police psychology.</p>

The efficiency of the medical role within a Single Point of Access (SPA) Service in reducing the number of clinic appointments required

AimsThe SPA service takes referrals from general practitioners (GPs), medical professionals, the London Ambulance service, the London Police, psychology and social services, and from patients themselves and their family members or support groups. Some of these referrals require input from secondary care, but others can be solved within primary care if given specialist advice, this minimizing the time spent by patients in the healthcare system and minimizing also the NHS costs.Our aim was to evaluate the implementation of the Advice from Medics Service in a 1-year period.MethodWe examined a random sample of 200 referrals between 1st of April 2019 and 31st of March 2020 out of all referrals that were considered, after the triage, to be appropriate for an advice on treatment provided by the medics as an alternative to a clinic appointment in secondary care. We collected information from the electronic patient records regarding the dates of referrals, the senders of referrals, the type of referrals, the age and gender of patients and the reasons to be referred, and finally we analysed the outcome of the referrals and compared it with the action requested.ResultOf the 200 referrals, 113 were for female patients and 87 for male patients. The age of patients was between 18 and 91 years old, with a median of 43 years old.The person/authority making the referral was the GP in 179 cases, and others in 21 cases.The referrers asked for review in 74 cases, urgent review in 2 cases, review and advice in 31 cases, only advice in 46 cases, and did not state the type of referral in 47 cases.The primary pathology implied was affective in most of the cases (122), followed by psychotic (31) and neurotic (22), organic (8), of personality (5), hyperkinetic disorders (5), due to substance misuse (4), of psychological development (2) and learning disability (1).The outcome of the referrals was as follows: 19 patients (9.5%) were seen by the Crisis Team, 11 (5.5%) were referred to other teams, 4 (2%) did not engage with SPA, and the rest of 166 (83%) referrals were solved with advice.ConclusionThe outcome was extremely favourable as the majority of referrals requested medical review but most of them (83%) were solved with specialist advice to GPs or other professionals, highlighting that the implementation of the Advice from Medics Service has been an improvement to the SPA.

Preemployment Psychological Screening of Police Officer Applicants

The psychological screening of law enforcement officer applicants represents a core practice area in police psychology. Significant advances have been made in recent years regarding the development of practice guidelines and standards. This chapter provides an overview of the essential components of this specialized form of high-stakes psychological assessment. Important legal principles are highlighted and key resources are identified. The core steps in a contemporary screening model are described and the psychological self-report measures most widely used in psychological screenings are profiled. Factors impacting the validity and usefulness of psychological test results are discussed. The critical need for preemployment psychological screenings of police officer candidates to be culturally sensitive is addressed, as are some of the criticisms that have been identified in the literature. The chapter stresses the need for preemployment assessments of police officer candidates to be evidence-based, ethically attuned, and consistent with recent advances in police psychology.