It is hard to comprehend how it feels to be told someone you know has been arrested for indecent images of children offences.
Someone whose relative was arrested for such crimes has written to thank the officer involved for her support during this traumatic time.
Bedfordshire Police’s new Cyber Security Advisor Sean O’Neil is a former senior investigating officer who for the past three years has utilised his investigative background in the business sector with a large ecommerce company.
With a wealth of experience in the business arena and 30 years’ police service under his belt, Sean’s mission is now to provide cyber security advice to businesses throughout Bedfordshire.
I am an investigator at heart.
I investigate issues which cause problems in the community, whether that be extortions, kidnaps or even murders. In the ecommerce industry I started to work on reputational issues, still making use of those policing skills to find out who might be attacking the company externally.
Working in ecommerce, the crimes I was looking at and liaising with police on were all enabled by a computer. I had to learn advanced systems really quickly and soon realised the scale of this type of criminality.
Sergeant Phil Cobley is both the Digital Forensics Manager and Cyber Crime Investigation Manager within Bedfordshire Police’s brand new Cyber Hub – a unit dedicated to analysing digital data to investigate cyber crime.
I suppose before I joined the police, I was conflicted about what I wanted to do. I got all the grades I needed at school to go and get a degree in computer science. That was what I was really interested in, but at the same time I was desperate to give policing a go and see whether it was for me.
As interested as I am in computer science and programming, I thought policing would be an incredible career path to go down. I thought, why not see if I can combine my two passions?
I decided to do my two-year police probationary period, and if I didn’t like it I could always go back and do the degree I’d planned. Continue reading
Beds' bobbies on the beat 