Entries are now open for participating exhibitors at Security & Policing 2025 to take part in a live industry challenge, and pitch their solutions to panels of experts as part of the Spotlight Stage feature at the event (previously known as the Fusion Forum).
The industry challenge has been set by the National Crime Agency (NCA) Strategic Centre, to help improve the NCA’s ability to anticipate and response to criminal activity, especially in fast-evolving areas like cybercrime and fraud. Cyber threats facing the NCA and the wider blue light community are ever-increasing, highlighting the importance of greater industry and law enforcement collaboration.
The Challenge
- The NCA are looking for solutions to identify how cybercrime is enabling fraud, in particular the ease of adoption of cybercrime techniques by conventional fraud offenders to operate at scale. This could involve anomaly detection, behavioural analytics, and risk-scoring models, greater industry/ law enforcement collaboration and intelligence sharing, to proactively identify potential threats. These tools could be building upon existing law enforcement efforts, or could be creating entirely new approaches to combating crime, and predictive policing with the appropriate bias safeguards in place. Any solution would need to be able to sit across multiple data sets. Tools should be focused on existing data accessible by Law Enforcement and/or clear and dark web solutions. This could include social media platforms for example, and other forums or news sites across different parts of the internet and across different sectors.
- We ask industry challengers to consider a range of solutions from Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) 2 or 3 (Concept formulated/ proof of concept) through to TRL 7 (proven operational environment).
- We ask that industry challengers identify and present technology solutions to support the NCA in their mission, whilst taking into account the following considerations.
Considerations:
- Legal, ethical non-discriminatory, bias safeguards, ECHR considered
- Support procedural justice, with high evidential standards
- Minimise intrusiveness / collateral intrusion
- End to end (suspicion, suspect, investigation, charge, disposal (court + out of court))
- Potential for adaptable applications across multiple crime categories.
- Multi-site / multi event / cross policing boundaries
- Minimal training footprint
- Data protection
- Potential for integrating into existing police systems / IT platforms
- Cost of operational / operating licenses / new and novel approaches to licences
- Engaging the public and private sector in intelligence gathering and sharing
- Use of open source software and industry approaches
- How might we scale disruptions utilising industry alongside the NCA
NCA Strategic Centre are open to:
- Solutions which allow us to spot challenges in criminal behaviour and adoption of new techniques. Potential technology solutions may include:
- Artificial intelligence (AI) with particular interest in Agentic AI for maximising officer efficiency / Machine Learning (ML) driven tools / Behavioural Analytics / Risk-Scoring models
- Anomaly Detection Tools to alert users to potential criminality
- Network Analysis Tools which support disruptions in a cost effective and impactive way for the public as well as providing visualisations
- Considerations for layered access data or information across law enforcement, Police Forces and partner organisations both nationally and internationally. For example, Threat Intelligence (sharing) Platforms which accounts for secure sharing and potentially how we benefit from evolutions in homomorphic encryptions
- Other relevant technology solutions.
Context of the NCA mission:
The National Crime Agency (NCA) in the UK has a mission to protect the public from serious and organised crime. They achieve this by:
- Degrading the most harmful organised crime groups: This involves targeting and dismantling criminal networks that pose significant threats to public safety.
- Collaborating with partners: The NCA works closely with other law enforcement agencies, both domestically and internationally, to combat crime more effectively.
- Utilising advanced technology and intelligence: They employ cutting-edge tools and data analysis to identify and predict criminal activities, enhancing their ability to respond proactively.
The NCA’s efforts are crucial in maintaining national security and ensuring the safety of communities across the UK.
How to enter:
To enter a submission to participate in this challenge, please send your written response via email (max 500 words) to Alistair Leuchars, Deputy Director, Cyber & Digital, by 12:00 on Friday 28 February 2025.
All entries should clearly mark a point of contact for the submission and include a full list of organisations if a team submission.
Submissions will then be reviewed by the challenge sponsors, and prior to the event, the authors of selected responses will be invited to participate in the live challenge event at Security & Policing 2025 to ‘pitch’ their ideas in five minutes to a panel of relevant end-users and experts from Police and industry in the Spotlight Stage feature at the event.