KINGSTON, Jamaica — Acknowledging that talented and intelligent young Jamaicans are sometimes behind cybercrimes affecting the country, Prime Minister Andrew Holness is warning that with increased cybersecurity capabilities, they will be caught.

“We have invested heavily in better communications, better intelligence gathering, better investigative capabilities, better forensic capabilities, and better cyber capabilities,” Holness said, “So before you commit a crime, think very carefully that the environment that you used to operate in, it is not the same environment as before.”

The prime minister was speaking at the launch of the Guardsman Cyber Intelligence Security Operations Centre (SOC) on Wednesday.

Holness, in congratulating the Guardsman Group on the launch of their 24/7 online monitoring hub, said he was looking forward to the growth of local cyber capabilities both in the private sector and in the public sector.

“For many decades, our security architecture was very unsophisticated.  In the last decade, the Government of Jamaica has more than tripled the national security budget. That tripling of the budget is not just for cars and better police stations and different uniforms and better gear.”

The prime minister also pointed out that modern cybercriminals do not necessarily fit a certain mould.

“The public tends to have a sense that the criminals that we are dealing with are all street-level operators… youngsters who are dispossessed, marginalised, [and] many of them are. But we are also dealing with criminals who are graduates from our universities, who have degrees, who are very intelligent, who are using the cyber world as cover to lead and influence organised criminal activity,” he warned.

However, Holness said that new capabilities were making that lifestyle less lucrative.

“The probability of getting caught is increasing. Very soon we will be in the high 90s [so] that if you commit a crime, you would have a 90 per cent or more probability of getting caught.”

Holness ended with a promise, “We know who you are. We know how to find you and we can reach out and touch you.”