The UK’s National Crime Agency and supplier Trend Micro will form a virtual team of cyber crime busters.
The supplier will share information on relevant cyber crime attacks, while its ‘crack’ Forward Looking Threat Research (FTR) team will work with the NCA to on using shared intelligence for potential law enforcement action.
NCA Head of Intelligence and Tasking, Steven Heywood said: "Utilising and sharing the expertise of Trend Micro will allow us to further understand and respond to emerging and evolving cyber crime threats to the UK."
The NCA will tap into Trend Micro’s global, 1,200-strong TrendLabs team, and its cloud-based Smart Protection Network, which analyses over 15TB of threat data, identifying and blocking more than 250 million threats each day.
Robert McArdle, EMEA Manager, FTR at Trend Micro, said: "We’re both parts of the same puzzle and as one of the largest security players in the world, we have one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle."
Trend Micro’s global FTR team has a strong track record of working with law enforcement agencies around the world to bring down cyber criminal operations.
As a result of close co-operation with Spanish law enforcers, key members of the gang behind the infamous Reveton ransomware were arrested back in 2013.
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Last year the security company revealed a three year agreement to collaborate more closely with Interpol -a deal which has seen a permanent member of the Trend team stationed with the global police organisation.
The partnership aided the industry-wide collaboration which successful dismantled the notorious SIMDA botnet in April.
Trend Micro’s FTR team has long-established relationships with NCA officers, but until now, information sharing between the two parties was done on an informal, ad hoc basis.
