Understanding how cybercrime can be prevented and helping protect its victims against online harms.
The Research Chair in Cybercrime Prevention was launched in September 2018 at the initiative of the Université de Montréal, Desjardins and the National Bank of Canada. It is headed by Benoît Dupont, professor of criminology and researcher at the International Center for Comparative Criminology at Université de Montréal. Its mission is to contribute to the advancement of research on cybercrime from a prevention perspective, through applied research projects developed in collaboration with its two industrial partners.
One of the main mandates of the Chair is to create, consolidate and stimulate a local, national and international network around the issue of cybercrime prevention. The objectives of this network are to promote the importance of the human factor in the prevention of cybercrime and the need to develop academic research on this under-researched topic. In addition to organizing seminars, the Chair also supports the organization of an annual international conference, the Human Factor in Cybercrime Conference, which brings together the main academic researchers on the issue and crystallizes the most recent empirical results through edited books and special issues of academic journals.
The Research Chair in Cybercrime Prevention also aims to train professionals in cybercrime prevention and risk management. Through Master’s and Doctoral programs, students have access to applied research activities that bring them into contact with the professional world, in particular through internships with our industrial partners and public presentations of their research results.
The Chair has created an Observatory of Cybercrime Prevention Programs, whose main objective is to constitute a public database providing a sample of intervention strategies around the world. This tool allows for the consistent consolidation of qualitative and quantitative data on cybercrime prevention programs and their effectiveness, in order to facilitate comparisons and evidence-based decision making.
Finally, the Chair launched the Cyber-criminology Clinic, which offers free support, training and information services to victims of crime facilitated by new technologies as well as to their families. The Clinic accomplishes its mission thanks to a multidisciplinary team of university students who are passionate about cybercrime. In October 2022, the Clinic inaugurated the Fraude-Alerte platform, the first community site in Canada that allows users to reference frauds encountered on the internet and to obtain personalized assistance if necessary.
