Blunting the cutting edge of crime: OSCE helps combat cybercrime in Central Asia
Many aspects of our lives have been changed fundamentally by the rapid evolution of digital technologies. While these innovations have brought about many benefits and opportunities, they have also enabled the rise of new security threats. Digital transformation has had a profoundly negative effect on criminal activity. New technologies have become useful aids in ‘traditional’ crimes, such as fraud or trade in illegal substances, while also creating entirely new forms of crime, like ransomware.
Rates of cybercrime have risen steadily in recent years, a trend exacerbated when the COVID-19 pandemic moved many aspects of daily life online. The data paints an alarming picture of the impact this is having on individuals, businesses and states: While in 2014 the global cost of cybercrime was estimated to be around $500 billion, it is predicted to hit $10.5 trillion by 2025.
These global trends are replicated at the regional level in Central Asia. In 2018, Kazakhstan registered 589 cyber-related crimes; by 2021 this figure had swollen to 21,479. In Uzbekistan, the number of reported IT-related crimes more than quadrupled between 2021 and 2023, from around 2,500 to over 12,300, as reported by local law enforcement. These figures are likely to continue to grow exponentially if cybercrime is left unchecked.
A threat to one is a threat to all
Investigating and prosecuting cybercrimes and other crimes involving electronic evidence is a challenge for criminal justice authorities everywhere. It not only requires adequate legal frameworks, appropriate technical tools, and specific knowledge and skills, but also relies on high levels of national and international co-operation.
In the borderless and interconnected world of cyberspace, gaps in combating cybercrime in one country can have consequences far beyond its borders. Perpetrators and victims are often located in different national jurisdictions—and so is the electronic evidence needed for criminal proceedings.
All these characteristics make the OSCE’s notion of comprehensive security, first set out in the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, particularly relevant to addressing criminal activity in cyberspace.
Making cybercrime training structured and sustainable
Strengthening the ability of criminal justice authorities to tackle cybercrime is especially important in the parts of the OSCE region that have undergone rapid digitalization in recent years. For this reason, we have focused our efforts on Central Asia since 2020. We have established ourselves as the only international organization providing targeted training and strategic expertise development to criminal justice authorities on cybercrime in the region.
This work has been delivered through the extra-budgetary project ‘Capacity Building on Combating Cybercrime in Central Asia’, funded by the United States, Germany, Finland and the Republic of Korea.
Working closely with law enforcement education institutions across the region, we have plugged previous knowledge gaps by training almost 600 police officers and prosecutors across the five Central Asian countries. Our training courses concentrated on the everyday skills frontline officers require to effectively combat cybercrime. Participants gained practical knowledge of how to handle electronic evidence at a crime scene, request electronic evidence from abroad, investigate cryptocurrencies and the Dark Web, conduct open-source intelligence and online investigations, and better understand the basics of digital forensics.
We also provided IT equipment and training materials to educational institutions in each state, enabling on-going and locally-directed education on cybercrime.
Putting human rights front and centre
A key focus across all our activities is highlighting the critical importance of human rights compliance to effective cybercrime investigations. The rights to privacy, a fair trial and freedom of expression are only some of the rights investigators and prosecutors must uphold in cyber-related investigations.
But we know that investigators and prosecutors sometimes struggle to translate the rights set out in international standards into practice at the different stages of criminal proceedings. So, we developed a dedicated training guide, one of the first of its kind, to provide actionable guidance to criminal justice practitioners across the OSCE area on how to uphold human rights in their daily work.
OSCE Training Guide on Ensuring Human Rights Compliance in Cybercrime Investigations
The Training Guide is available in English and Russian.
Beyond skills and equipment, this project has moved the regional conversation on cybercrime education and training forward by helping to build new professional networks and partnerships between police and prosecutorial academies across Central Asia. Crucially, these activities have also triggered wider institutional reforms, including the establishment of new training centres and departments in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
Helping states stay ahead of the curve
Yet there is still much to do to address the rapidly evolving threat of cybercrime. In Central Asia, the practitioners we work with highlight ongoing difficulties such as the lack of a strategic approach to professional training and education, the absence of standard operating procedures and internal guidelines, underdeveloped digital forensics capacities, low public awareness about cybercrime threats, and limited knowledge about cybercrime and electronic evidence among policymakers.
Overcoming these challenges is at the centre of the second phase of our regional cybercrime project for Central Asia, kicking off in late 2024. It is structured around four main pillars: education, electronic evidence, regional co-operation, and awareness. The importance of upholding international human rights commitments when investigating and prosecuting cybercrimes and other crimes involving electronic evidence will remain a cross-cutting priority.
Amid ever-greater digitalization and the rapid development of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, cybercrime will continue to grow in scope and severity—in Central Asia and worldwide. We at the OSCE are committed to continuing to provide support to our participating States and to joining forces with other national and international actors to make cyberspace more secure for all.