RIPE NCC and Europol Enhance Cooperation to Tackle Cybercrime and Internet Security

The RIPE NCC and Europol signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at Europol's headquarters in The Hague on 14 December 2016.

The MoU documents the unique relationship between the RIPE NCC and Europol, with the aim of fostering continued cooperation between the two and lending one another expertise in the areas of cybercrime and Internet security.

“As a Regional Internet Registry, the RIPE NCC is accountable to all Internet stakeholders in our service region, including the law enforcement community. The RIPE community has a lot of technical expertise to offer law enforcement in their work to keep the Internet secure,” said Axel Pawlik, Managing Director of the RIPE NCC.

The RIPE NCC has worked with Europol over the past several years, offering training courses tailored specifically to the needs of law enforcement agencies (LEAs), such as searching for information in the RIPE Database as part of their investigations.

“Cooperation with the technical community helps law enforcement improve their technical skills, which is becoming more and more important in today's security landscape,” said Steven Wilson, head of Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3). “We believe our work with the RIPE community will help improve the safety of the Internet for all users.”

This MoU is the latest formalised agreement for greater cooperation between the RIPE NCC and one of the many external organisations we work with, including governments, regulators, technical bodies, industry groups, academic institutions and others.

However, this is the first such agreement that the RIPE NCC has reached with an LEA. “This represents an important new model for cooperation to enhance Internet security, which we hope will see growing links between the technical and law enforcement communities in the coming years,” said Paul Rendek, Director of External Relations at the RIPE NCC. “We're proud of the work our two organisations have done over the past several years to help bring our communities closer together, and I'm pleased to formalise that relationship today.”

You can learn more about the RIPE NCC's external engagement with external parties in this RIPE Labs article, or see a list of the different agreements and memberships we have with external parties.