FOLLOWING thousands of incidents of cyber-crime in September 2015, including 61 in Stourbridge, the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) wants to highlight the issue.

Cyber-crime is a top priority for David Jamieson, the current PCC, who recently hosted his annual business summit in Birmingham focussing on online theft and fraud.

In recent months the region has been hit by a number of ‘zeroaccess’ infections, a type of trojan horse virus that remains hidden in computers and downloads other dangerous malware.

Mr Jamieson has since visited Tetra Group after the firm was hit by an infection last January, allowing cyber criminals to dodge the company’s existing anti-malware software and make 21 fraudulent payments to mule accounts; losing the firm a six figure sum.

He said: “Crime is changing, not falling, and it is vital we get to grips with issues such as cyber-crime. We must understand it in order to tackle it.

“We also shouldn’t think of it as a victimless crime because it is not.

“Economic development is right at the core of what we do and what I believe is that economic success is one of the ways we can build a better society. This is part of my ambition. Tackling cyber-crime and other crimes that affect local businesses is one way of achieving that.”