Businesses and organisations in the North West can now get access to an enhanced version of ,Police CyberAlarm, an award-winning free tool funded by the Home Office and delivered by police forces in the region.

The enhanced version of Police CyberAlarm works alongside an organisation’s current cyber security products, such as the firewall, Network Intrusion Detection System (IDS) and Intrusion Protection System (IPS), Anti-Spam and Network Anti-Virus to help members better understand the cyber threats they face.

Data received by the Police CyberAlarm Server is then used to create regular reports on potential malicious activity seen by individual members as well as reports containing threat trends seen across the member network. Members can then use this reported intelligence to update their defences to better protect themselves from cyber threats.

Vulnerability Scanning can be added and used to scan an organisation's website and external IP addresses, providing regular reports of all known vulnerabilities.

How has the Police CyberAlarm helped businesses?

Since its launch, ,Police CyberAlarm has identified over a billion potential suspicious events resulting in reports and advice being given to members, enabling them to take action to prevent a successful attack.

In one case Police CyberAlarm detected a UDP amplification attack, a very potent attack method that turns an organisation’s own equipment against it, causing the member organisation infrastructure to attack itself. Working with the Police CyberAlarm team, the member was able to mitigate the effects of the attack stopping it from having any effect on its network.

In another case, a company, which was not a Police CyberAlarm member, fell victim to a ransomware attack which forced it to shut down business-critical systems. After contacting the police, Police CyberAlarm was installed immediately by the company, which was able to identify the method of the attack, which was communicated to the company to allow it to close the vulnerabilities that existed. The company’s next Police CyberAlarm report indicated that almost 1.3 million attempts to gain access had been made in the week after the attack.

The data collected by Police CyberAlarm helps members to better protect themselves and the information gathered also helps regional and force cyber crime teams to build a much better understanding of the scale, types and clusters of cyber threats being aimed at members across England and Wales. Policing has been able to use the information collected to enable the local and regional cybercrime teams to proactively warn members of new emerging, recent and zero-day threats.

To coincide with the launch of the enhanced version of Police CyberAlarm, a new website has also been unveiled to make it easier for potential member organisations to get ,further information about the benefits of becoming a member and sign up for free.