A new multimillion-dollar cybercrime lab will soon aim to stop online perpetrators' illegal activity.

Yesterday the Manhattan district attorney's office announced that the New York City Council has given it $4.2 million to build a new cybercrime lab, which for the first time will enable prosecutors and forensics analysts to work in the same location. The new lab reflects the district attorney's increased focus on cybercrime and identity theft.

“Cybercrime and identify theft are among the fastest growing crimes in the country,” Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said in a statement. “Nearly every case we prosecute—financial fraud, terrorism, even street crimes—depends upon the resources and expertise of my Office's Cybercrime and Identity Theft Bureau,” which according to Thomson Reuters handles between 200 and 300 new identity-theft crimes each month, analyzes 1,000 cell phones a year, and analyzed three times the number of computers between 2010 and 2011.

The announcement about the new cybercrime lab comes just a few days after Vance reopened the case against former Goldman Sachs computer programmer Sergey Aleynikov with stealing secret coding from his employer. Last year Aleynikov was sentenced to more than eight years in prison, but earlier this year, the 2nd Circuit reversed the judgment.

Read the Wall Street Journal for more information about the new cybercrime lab.

For more InsideCounsel stories about cybercrime and data security, read:

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