"The PNP, as the primary government arm tasked to maintain peace and order, is now faced with growing challenges in cyberspace," Canapi says. "We at ITMS realize this and we recognize that we, as policemen, can no longer just rely mainly on our truncheons and shields, on firepower and armaments. The cyber world has now been added to the beat of the PNP which today uses ICT as a tool to promote our mission to serve and protect."

In the past few years, varied forms of cyber crimes have occurred -- hackers who want to access corporate and individual data, criminals who use social media to victimize easily-deceived preys, and many more. With the different means of communication and data access that the Internet provides, new ways of doing unlawful acts have emerged.

"We know, for instance, that criminals can use aliases in transacting via the internet, which makes it very hard to track them," noted Canapi. "To help us do our job, we collaborate with our partners from the academe, government, and private sector."

One of the projects that PNP did to combat cyber crime in previous years was the establishment of an Internet child protection program dubbed as the "Special Project Angel Net" (http://www.cidgangelnet.ph) that was spearheaded by the Anti-Transnational Crime Division (ATCD) of the CIDG. The project's main purpose was to address Internet-based child abuse and to promote Internet safety.

Programs like this, along with the recent passage of Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, go a long way toward combating increasing threats coursed through the Internet, according to Canapi, who added that there has long been a need for "laws that will balance privacy and security and punish cyber criminals to the law's full extent."