"Some countries don't allow for the free sharing of information like we do with the VGT partners," he said. "It's not just a matter of embracing everybody.

"I think the addition of the UAE has changed the dynamic of the group. But I would say it's probably one of the most progressive policing forces in the world. The fact that they've joined our group shows they're dead-set fair dinkum about catching up with the rest of us."

Sergio Staro, senior police officer with the Italian National Police and a founding member of the VGT board, said investigators needed to speak the same language in order to avoid duplication of policing efforts globally.

"The work we carry out in Italy is just a drop in the sea," he said.

However, the stark differences in Italy and Australia's policing efforts into child exploitation and general cybercrime point to the difficulties of global harmonisation. Since February 2008, the Italian National Police have distributed a blacklist of up to 655 globally-hosted child pornography sites to the country's service providers for implementation and filtering within six hours of updates.