Cybercrime is becoming more sophisticated, scalable and interconnected, placing growing pressure on organisations, individuals and law enforcement agencies across the UK. Will Lyne, Head of Economic and Cybercrime at the Metropolitan Police and one of the guest speakers at this year’s Infosecurity Europe taking place at ExCeL London from June 2-4, tells us how threats such as ransomware, phishing and AI-driven fraud are evolving, and why collaboration between industry, government and international law enforcement is critical to strengthening cyber-resilience and disrupting organised cybercrime networks.
How is the cyberthreat landscape evolving in the UK, particularly in relation to organised crime and economic offences?
The cyberthreat landscape in the UK reflects the global picture, and as ever is moving at pace. It has become more professionalised and interconnected, with crime groups routinely using digital tools to enable fraud, extortion and money laundering at scale. In some areas we are seeing a convergence between cybercrime, online fraud and other online criminality – many groups and individuals are cross-threat offenders.
What are the most common cybercrime tactics currently affecting businesses and individuals?
The most common tactics remain phishing, smishing and other forms of social engineering, which are used to facilitate fraud against individuals and organisations alike. Businesses are particularly affected by ransomware and business email compromise, while individuals are increasingly targeted through impersonation scams, account takeovers and investment or romance fraud.
How is the Metropolitan Police Service working with industry to strengthen cyber-resilience and intelligence sharing?
Here in the Met we recognise the requirement and benefits of working closely with industry to both understand the threat picture and deliver an impactful response for Londoners. We enjoy great relationships with industry across a number of sectors including banking, telecommunications, threat intelligence and technology – sharing intelligence, identifying threats and then seeking ways to disrupt them to protect the public.
What role does public awareness play in preventing cybercrime, and where are the biggest gaps today?
Public awareness is critical in preventing and protecting against cybercrime and lots of other online threats such as fraud, in particular where the criminal schemes rely on social engineering that aim to deceive and manipulate people. In the Met, we run a number of campaigns in this space. We have had adverts in ‘Let’s Talk Business’ magazine February and May issues as well as adverts and longer editorial pieces in ‘London Business Matters’ magazine in the March/April and May/June Issue. We also attend large scale events, such as the Accountex exhibition in partnership with the London Cyber Resilience Centre on the May 13 and 14 at the Excel and the International Cyber Expo 2026 at Olympia on September 29 and 30.
How can organisations better prepare for and respond to cyber-incidents from a law enforcement perspective?
Prevention is important, and people and organisations can strengthen their resilience through basic cyber-hygiene such as multi-factor authentication, patching and staff awareness. However, preparing for incidents is also important. No matter how protected you are, everyone is a potential victim. Understanding your cyber-risk and then having and regularly refreshing clear incident response plans is important, and I would encourage reporting incidents to law enforcement via Report Fraud, run by colleagues at the City of London Police, providing us important data to disrupt offenders, recover assets and prevent further harm.
What trends do you expect to shape cybercrime and economic crime over the next few years?
Cybercrime will be increasingly scalable and sophisticated, with the use of AI enabling more convincing fraud and social engineering, alongside continued growth in ransomware and data-driven extortion incidents. The boundary between cybercrime and economic crime threats such as fraud, and other threats, will continue to blur, reinforcing the need for strong collaboration between law enforcement, government and industry in protecting the public. The scale of the threat in terms of the volume of offending, especially for offences such as fraud, is likely to increase.
At the Met we are committed to protect Londoners against economic and cybercrime, and will continue to work tirelessly to disrupt those who seek to harm our communities.
How is Artificial Intelligence changing both the scale and sophistication of cybercrime investigations?
AI is increasing both the scale and sophistication of the different stages of cybercrime business models. Examples include perfecting more successful phishing emails to automating the exploitation of software vulnerabilities (which is something we have heard lots about in the media recently). We have not yet observed AI running end-to-end cyberattacks in a consistent way, but it may be coming. Whilst we know cybercriminals are using AI, the challenge for us in law enforcement is keeping pace to harness new technology to disrupt offenders.
What sectors or types of organisations are currently most at risk from cyber-enabled economic crime?
Every organisation is a potential victim – the majority of cybercriminal groups are broad and indiscriminate in their targeting.
How important is international co-operation in tackling modern cybercrime networks and cross-border attacks?
It’s essential. Cybercrime is inherently cross-border, with offenders, infrastructure and victims often in different countries. For example, an attack may involve servers hosted in one country, perpetrators operating from another, cryptocurrency payments moving through jurisdictions, and victims located worldwide. No single nation can effectively address these threats in isolation.
Collaboration between governments, law enforcement agencies, intelligence services, regulators, technology companies, internet service providers, financial institutions and cybersecurity firms to name but a few, enables the rapid sharing of threat intelligence, technical indicators and investigative insights.
This collective approach improves the ability to detect malicious activity early, attribute attacks more accurately and co-ordinate timely responses to emerging threats that deliver impactful disruptions.
We are very fortunate in the Met (and across wider UK Policing) to enjoy excellent relationships with lots of people and organisations across the industry. This co-ordination strengthens our resilience, supports incident response and investigations. Sustained international collaboration strengthens our collective ability to associate cost and risk to cybercriminals who harm our communities, wherever they are located.
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