devices as business tools, it is easy to see that there is plenty of fertile ground in which cybercrime
can operate and grow.
As cyberspace is rapidly evolving, the cyberthreats of the recent past also have also changed. They
have not only multiplied with respect to the means through which they are perpetrated, but also
have evolved into cybercrime, cyberterrorism, cyberespionage, cyberwarfare and hacktivism.7 The
universe of cybercrime is huge and includes different types of attacks and attackers, risks and
threats.
The challenge, therefore, is how to combat such diverse criminal activity and yet to preserve the
many positive aspects of our interconnected world.
II. The Toolkit
This Toolkit, Combating Cybercrime: Tools and Capacity Building for Emerging Economies, aims
at building capacity to combat cybercrime among policy-makers, legislators, public prosecutors
and investigators, as well as among individuals and in civil society at large in developing countries
by providing a synthesis of good practices in the policy, legal and criminal-justice aspects of the
enabling environment necessary to combat cybercrime. Included in this Toolkit is an Assessment
Tool that enables countries to assess their current capacity to combat cybercrime and identify
capacity-building priorities (discussed in more detail in chapter 7, and included in appendix 9
E). The Toolkit is also accompanied by a Virtual Library, with materials provided by participating
organizations and others.8
There are no shortages of resources regarding combatting cybercrime. An overriding ethos of the
organizations (listed below) participating in the development of this Toolkit was to avoid repeating
or replicating existing resources. However, it was felt that there was merit to producing a synthetic
reference on combatting cybercrime, taking best practices and packaging them in a new, holistic
fashion. In that sense, the Toolkit can be viewed as a kind of “portal”, overview or one-stop
shop that directs users who want to learn more or to go deeper into a particular topic, as well as
developing a framework to better understand how seemingly disparate issues interrelate and
providing some direction on how to get to primary resources.
The Toolkit is arranged along the following lines. In the introductory chapter, the Toolkit examines
the current landscape of cybercrime and some of the challenges are to combatting cybercrime. In
chapter 2, the Toolkit then looks at some foundational issues including what is meant by and what
constitutes cybercrime, and then looks at procedural, evidentiary, jurisdictional and institutional
issues. The Toolkit goes on to consider formal and informal measures of international cooperation
in chapter 3. In chapter 4, the Toolkit explores national legal frameworks. Chapter 5 examines in
detail at due process, data protection and freedom of expression safeguards. Chapter 6 looks
at different aspects of capacity-building. Chapter 7 explores various assessment tools, including
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