Improving the Training of Law Enforcement Officers in Countering Crimes Committed Using Information Technology
Authors: Arkhiptsev Ivan , Sarychev Alexander , Krasnikov Roman 
Published: August 2020

Introduction: according to the official statistics, the number of acts involving information technology is increasing every year in Russia. In particular, currently, the types of crimes in the field of information technology are changing qualitatively and continue to evolve continuously, becoming highly organized and more sophisticated. Through the use of information technologies in Russia, such crimes as hacking, illegal data acquisition (information espionage), theft of other people’s property from payment (settlement) cards and accounts of citizens, trafficking of drugs, arms, human beings are committed; the extremist literature is distributed, new members of terrorist groups are recruited; pornography, including children, is spread, illegal gambling and online games are conducted; fraud through the use of cellular and IP-telephony services, theft of personal data in large amount and selling them, and other crimes are committed using information technologies. The current type of computer fraud – phishing – is gaining momentum. Its essence is that cybercriminals seek to get hold of the data of ordinary people through computer technology, and using this data, get hold of their funds, including financial ones. It seems that such actions can neither contribute to the development of Russian society, nor to the development of civilized relations in society, nor to the development of information networks themselves. After all, any technology can be used for both constructive and non-constructive technologies. And when these goals are destructive, the law enforcement agencies, in our opinion, should have an effective level of training to deal with such violations. We believe that it is not enough to calculate, detect, and establish. We still need to be able to bring the culprit to criminal responsibility. In this regard, the most important thing is to ensure that anonymity not only creates the illusion of impunity, but also that the law enforcement agencies have a sufficient legal, organizational and, first of all, personnel basis to expose the criminal. In order to successfully thwart crimes in the field of information technology, the availability of implementation of the adopted standards and the key to the implementation of the state policy in the field of information security is the training and education of appropriate personnel who would provide “breakthrough” results in this area. The purpose of the research is to study the issues of improving the training of the law enforcement officers in countering crimes committed through the use of information technologies. Methods: the research uses a comparative analysis and generalization of the examples of the educational methods used in the educational organizations of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the field of information security. The authors study, in particular, the general theoretical and practical orientation of the educational process in this area, synthesizing the results obtained, whose purpose is to improve the training of highly qualified specialists for the Internal Affairs bodies capable of countering crimes in the field of information technologies. Results: the authors formulate the main directions for improving the training of the law enforcement officers to counter crimes committed using information technologies, in particular, on the example of the educational organizations used in the educational process of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia. Thus, one of the measures proposed by the authors in this direction is the opening of a new specialty – cyber-investigator or cyber-criminalist. The entry of developed countries into the sixth technological order and the further active digitalization of the world economy predict a huge scale and replication of crimes using information technologies. This circumstance actualizes the need to popularize the profession of a cyber-investigator – a specialist with an interdisciplinary education, i.e. experience in the investigative agencies will have to be combined with the skills of a criminalist and a specialist in the field of information protection.