Malaysian Police Chief: train officers in cyber security

Malaysia’s police officers need to upgrade their skills for handling cyber crimes, Inspector-General of the Royal Malaysian Police, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar said. “Cyber crimes are a threat in this day and age.

We must increase the capacity of our officers in handling this threat,” he said. “We are always ready, but we have to upgrade and improve our capacity,” he said. The Police will look to work with the National University of Malaysia (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia) to train policemen, he said.

He plans to discuss this with the University’s Dean of Social Sciences and Humanities, Dr Hazita Azman. Malaysia will also use courses provided by the new Interpol Global Complex for Innovation to train its officers, he said. Meanwhile, Malaysia’s national cyber security agency said that up to 30 citizens fall victim to cyber crimes everyday.

But this is an understatement, it added, since many cases are not reported or even noticed by victims “The weakest link in cyber security is people," said Dr Amirudin Abdul Wahab, CEO of CyberSecurity Malaysia. "Skills in investigating cyber crime here are still new.”

"We offer about 26 programmes on our website cyberguru.my that covers basic to professional level cyber security training,” he said. The agency also offers a course on cybersecurity that can be used to train police officers.