Criminals are taking advantage of our online connectivity activities in ways that are disturbing, in ways that we are often behind as governments in addressing.
This was highlighted by Australia’s Ambassador for Cyber Affairs and Critical Technology Brendan Dowling during his official visit to the Criminal Investigations Department yesterday.
He says Fiji and Australia face similar challenges as our societies and economies are more connected online, we spend more of our social time online, as more businesses are digitally connected that brings a huge amount of benefits and prosperity we all enjoy and the connectivity that we can foster on line.
Dowling says many criminals are taking advantage of online tools and digital tools to do the crimes that they may have previously done offline, like drug trafficking, exploitation of children and human trafficking, all using online tools and connectivity to perpetrate their crimes.
Following a brief overview of the Cybercrime Unit established in 2007 and the digital forensic lab opened in 2022 with the support of the AFP, Dowling says online safety and crime are increasingly becoming problematic as the region moves towards digitization.
He says there is so much innovation by cyber criminals, using sophisticated tools, and sophisticated software collaborating across borders and working together.
He adds the only way that we are going to combat the surge of cybercrime is by working together and by also adopting some of those sophisticated tools to monitor what is happening and ideally lead to prosecutions and hold people accountable for these activities.
Dowling commended the proactive efforts of the cybercrime team in the conduct of community awareness programs throughout Fiji.
He has reassured the CID Cyber Crime Unit of the Australian Federal Police's continued support.
