Yohanan Danino in 2011. Photo: Wikipedia

Israel’s Police Chief, Yohanan Danino, announced Monday the establishment of a special police cyber unit whose role will be to combat computer crimes and fight cyber terrorism.

“Criminal trafficking routes are used as a platform for terrorist purposes,” Danino said this morning at the Homeland Security International Conference held in Tel Aviv according to a translation. “The issue of cyber warfare is marked as one of the greatest threats to all police forces of the world.”

The unit will consist of 60 officers and will be responsible for building a safety net on cyber crime.

The announcement comes two weeks after a system-wide cyber attack forced police to discontinue use of the internet on computers and avoid using thumb drives or CDs, or any other passing of data and programs between police computers.

The incident itself came only 11 days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting that “There is an escalation in the attempts to carry out a cyber attack on Israel’s’ computer infrastructures. There are daily attempts to break into Israeli systems.” He also noted that in the previous year he had established a national cyber headquarters to combat the threat.