The City of London Police are planning to assemble a team of “cyber detectives” and create a programme to help fight against hacking crimes, which will be trialled next year.

The “cyber detectives” will be students from UK universities who study computer science and is designed to give financial institutions threat briefings and incident response training conducted by trained officers.

Ilia Kolochenko, CEO of High-Tech Bridge, commented: “This is a great news reaffirming UK’s cybersecurity leadership in Europe. Many EU countries cannot afford even the fundamental resources and people to investigate and prosecute cybercrime.

“UK gives a laudable example everyone should follow. However, we should not forget that cybercrime investigation is first of all based on practical experience, not on a university degree.

“Thus, retaining experienced professionals will likely be quite costly as large companies are ready to pay them very competitive salaries. Retention of talents will be a challenge.”

The plan also comes after the City of London Corporation unveiled plans for a new “cyber court” that will focus on computer crime.