Amy Hess, executive assistant director of the FBI’s criminal, cyber, response and services branch, said the bureau has combined traditional techniques with new technological applications to speed up investigations and address today’s cyber crimes, Nextgov reported Monday.
“And some of the techniques that are used are still the same that we have been using for over 110 years,†Hess said. “But some tactics have adapted with technology and we’ve built new tools to find criminal activity on the internet,†she said at a Digital Government Institute event in Washington.
She discussed how a high-tech organized crime unit that was created to address fraudulent cyber schemes and other activities on the darknet led to the establishment of the Joint Criminal Opioid Darknet Enforcement team.
Hess mentioned how technical applications helped change the bureau’s behavioral analysis unit and cited how case link analysis and technical profiling allowed the FBI to link different versions of ransomware attacks to the same authors.
The FBI created new positions for digital operations specialists, data analysts and scientists this year and Hess said the bureau intends to recruit more employees with technical skills to support investigation work.
