On 14-17 March 2017 a special programme on strengthening cybercrime investigation and digital forensics capabilities has taken place at the Criminal Investigation Department of the Sri Lanka Police in Colombo. The 4-day training, attended by 35 Police officers and representatives from the Sri Lanka CERT, was delivered under Result 2 of the GLACY+ framework, by trainers from the INTERPOL Global Complex for Innovation in Singapore and C-PROC.
Building on recommendations given in the initial assessment, on 14-16 March the programme has focused on organizational and technical aspects that enable successful investigations of cybercrime and cyber-enabled crimes. Special sessions have been also dedicated to strengthening Open Source investigation skills and to practicing with digital forensics tools to correctly acquire and handle electronic evidence.
A visit was also conducted at the newly established Digital Forensics Laboratory of the Sri Lanka Police.
On 17 March, a workshop has been dedicated to public-private cooperation, with a particular emphasis on the co-operation between Police and service providers, and the related procedural provisions foreseen by the Budapest Convention. All the major Sri Lankan ISPs were present and exchanged fruitful considerations on practices currently in place to respond collaboration requests coming from the Police and related issues.
Follow-ups will be given both on the policy level, also involving the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, as well as on the operational level, with further specialized training sessions for Sri Lanka Police.
Worth to mention, after the workshop the Council of Europe delegation has visited the Sri Lanka CERT and the digital forensics laboratory, which, as of today, plays a relevant role in supporting cybercrime investigations.