Europol established the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) in 2013 to strengthen law enforcement’s response to cybercrime in the EU and thus help protect European citizens, businesses and governments. Europol takes a three-pronged approach to the fight against cybercrime: operations, forensics and strategy. The specific types of cybercrime in focus are hi-tech crimes, transnational payment fraud, and child sexual exploitation.
Europol’s Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment (IOCTA) provides a law enforcement-focused annual assessment of key cybercrime developments, changes and emerging threats.