AN INTERNATIONAL coalition is needed to fight cyber-crime, Torfaen MP Nick Thomas-Symonds has said.

Speaking in Parliament this week the Labour MP said he was concerned to see the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre had responded to more than 600 significant incidents in just one year.

Addressing Home Office Minister Ben Wallace, he said: “Some of those threats come from hostile states and from areas of the world that are ungoverned. What practical steps are the government going to take to build the international coalition that will be required to deal with this issue?”

Mr Wallace replied the National Crime Agency and GCHQ are working internationally to battle cyber crime.

“We have seen a number of very successful operations, most recently in December, when, in an operation led by Europol, we took down the Avalanche cloud hosting service that was sending over one million fraudulent emails a week,” he said.