Microsoft Takes Fight Against Cybercrime To New Level With Its Cybercrime Center

Cybercrime is no joke, with security specialist McAfee estimating the cost of illegal cyber activity to be around $300 billion worldwide in 2013. That is more than enough money to feed the world’s poor! While the average person may not be all that concerned with cybercrime, Microsoft is taking on an aggressive stance against it. And why not? The company is probably one of the most “victimized”.

Just how serious is Microsoft about fighting cybercrime? As serious as unveiling a new, state-of-the-art Cybercrime Center.

If you think this is taking things too far, take a look at some statistics.

• 50% of online adults were cybercrime victims in the past year
• 20% of businesses – small and medium – have been targeted by cybercriminals

http://youtu.be/OZigCFaxbyc

So yes, Microsoft’s new Cybercrime Center is very much real and is based in the Redmond campus. From an article Microsoft itself released about its high tech facility, it seems that the Center is something right out of the movies – smart people trying to outsmart hackers while the hackers make countermoves to outsmart the “good guys”…and it goes round and round; except the guys at the Cybercrime Center have all the power, technology, and money that Microsoft can spare for this endeavor.

Who are the people who work at the Cybercrime Center?

This snippet from Microsoft’s feature tends to be PR-ish, but it does get one’s attention, and makes you think of switching careers.

The center is home to a team of hand-selected experts who were, in their pre-Microsoft lives, federal prosecutors, police officers, technical analysts, bankers, engineers and physicists. They now work to make the Internet a safer place.

Crime + Internet = cybercrime, and this team has investigated (and is investigating) a broad array of digital villainy. Their investigations have brought them to the doorstep of the Russian mafia and a brutally violent Mexican narcotics cartel, as well as all manner of drug dealers, thieves, counterfeiters, pirates and child exploiters from all over the world. It’s easy to draw parallels with TV shows such as CSI but the similarities with Hollywood come to an end very quickly.

It may all seem glammed up, but we can’t NOT give kudos to Microsoft for taking this initiative – even though they probably have some agenda of their own.

[Images via Microsoft]