The overlap between criminal justice and cybercrime is undeniable as many of the processes between the two are relatively the same: The prevention of criminal activity, the investigation, court proceedings, and rehabilitation. Whether a crime has been committed online or in person, the offending persons must be brought to justice to ensure safety for the public and the victims.
What makes cyber crime a differing discipline is that it requires a more technical set of skills and critical thinking when analyzing interactions over technology. The internet has allowed more opportunities for criminal activity and requires proper legislation to judge what exactly is deemed criminal. What makes cybercrime worse is that it can occur on a larger scale in a short amount of time and can go undetected.
- Investigations:
- In order to put cases together, criminal justice and cybercrime professionals use forensics to gather evidence that a crime has been committed. This includes collecting, analyzing, and preserving evidence/ items of interest.
- Legislation:
- Criminal justice professionals must determine what counts as an online crime. When analyzing interactions over the internet, it requires critical thinking and a baseline understanding. Understandably, since internet crimes can be committed internationally, collaboration between overseas criminal justice professionals is crucial.
- Prevention:
- To prevent criminals the opportunity to commit a crime and from becoming a victim, it is best to make the public aware of the dangers they may find themselves in. Not only are the users playing a part in staying safe online and in person, computing systems manufacturers play a part in the safe uses of their devices; implementing patches to the latest security threats, biometric security, and two factor authentication to name a few.
- Sentencing:
- The concern with sentencing for online committed crimes is that criminal activity can occur from anywhere in the world; making the process of bringing the offender to justice extremely difficult. Online crimes face similar sentencing as traditional criminal activity; however, damage done from online crimes can linger much longer and have a larger number of victims.
Both disciplines cannot stand alone without the incorporation of: law enforcement investigators, engineering teams that are knowledgeable of the opportunities for crime, ways to properly identify those involved, ways to put an end to a threat and a post response plan.