Criminal justice practitioners explore how to effectively counter cybercrime and cyber-enabled crime at OSCE conference in Vienna

More than 140 criminal justice practitioners and representatives of the OSCE participating States, OSCE Partners for Co-operation and international organizations explored how to effectively counter cybercrime and cyber-enabled crime at a conference in Vienna on 24 May organized by the Strategic Police Matters Unit of the OSCE Secretariat’s Transnational Threats Department, in co-operation with the 2019 Slovak OSCE Chairmanship and the Austrian Federal Ministry of the Interior.

The conference, Crime in the Digital Age, was the concluding activity of the OSCE’s flagship regional capacity-building project for criminal justice practitioners combating cybercrime and cyber-enabled crime in South-Eastern Europe.

The panelists highlighted the achievements, challenges and lessons learned from implementing the two-year project in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia. They also discussed broader topics related to criminal justice responses to the growing role of digital technologies in conducting or facilitating criminal activities, key elements of effective capacity building in this field and future trends such as the development of artificial intelligence.

The effective retention of digital evidence, adapting legislative frameworks to match the latest technological innovations, and reducing the knowledge gap among many criminal justice practitioners in this field were some of the key issues raised.

“Ensuring that the criminal justice institutions are capable of responding not only to today’s security threats and challenges but also to those of tomorrow is one of the key requirements for the sound and effective functioning of the security sector as well as the public’s trust and confidence in the ability of state institutions to protect citizens’ rights and uphold the rule of law,” said Katarina Zakova, Deputy Permanent Representative of Slovakia to the OSCE.

Erhard Friessnik, head of the Austrian Cybercrime-Competence-Centre C4, underlined that cybercrime can only be effectively addressed through strengthening international co-operation and building strong partnerships between criminal justice institutions, the international community, the private sector and civil society.

The OSCE's regional capacity-building project on combating cybercrime and cyber-enabled crime in South-Eastern Europe began in the summer of 2017 and will conclude in July. It has been supported by Germany, Italy, Slovakia and the United States of America.