CEOP is the UK law enforcement’s lead agency for the protection of children from sexual exploitation, working both online and offline. Detica, part of the BAE Systems defense company, is essentially an information analysis company. It helps commercial business understand, manage and protect its data; and helps governments strengthen both national security and resilience.
The award of strategic partner is in recognition of the pro bono support provided by Detica to CEOP. It deployed its Detica NetReveal technology and cyber skills to help CEOP quickly and accurately process its data. NetReveal is fundamentally a fraud discovery tool designed to detect financial crime, tax evasion and terrorist financing.
However, its ability to detect hidden financial relationships has been directed at detecting hidden illegal sexual relationships in the vast volumes of information provided to CEOP by local and international law enforcement agencies. Detica’s tools are used to provide intelligence on the whereabouts of child sexual offenders by reconstituting conversations, profiling suspects, identifying risk factors and disseminating prioritized intelligence dossiers.
“Our tools do two key things with the information CEOP has received,” explained Detica. “First they correlate the information that CEOP has received so that CEOP staff can analyze it far more quickly.” This involves taking all of the information received for a case and grouping it up to make it quicker and easier for CEOP staff to process. “Second, we take risk factors that CEOP has specified and 'tag' the pieces of information that have those risk factors. CEOP staff can then prioritize work on the information where the most risk factors are found.”
Without this support, CEOP would need to manually sift all of the data. With the support, it saved 330 working days during the biggest international online child abuse investigation to date – Operation Rescue – which led to the safeguarding of more than 70 children and the arrest of over 130 offenders in the UK alone. “BAE Systems Detica has made a huge contribution to CEOP’s work,” commented CEOP’s CEO Peter Davies, “helping us identify child sex offenders and safeguard vulnerable children. The expertise, advice and technology provided to our officers have been enormously beneficial during a number of major investigations, most significantly during our biggest operation to date – Operation Rescue.”
Detica intends to continue helping CEOP, and is, says managing director Martin Sutherland, “looking forward to developing our partnership further.”