MOSCOW, March 22 (RIA Novosti) – Russia's Kaspersky Lab is to cooperate with a new division of Interpol in fighting cybercrime, the Moscow-based antivirus company said on Friday.

“I’ve been calling for the creation of a so-called ‘Internet Interpol’ for many years, and now it has finally happened,” Yevgeny Kaspersky, CEO and co-founder of the information-technology security company, told RIA Novosti on Friday.

Kaspersky said that the Russian company will act as a consultant to Interpol Global Complex for Innovation in its investigations of cybercrimes. The company plans to send some of its experts to work in the international police innovative division’s office scheduled to start operating in Singapore in 2014.

Kaspersky Lab “will provide cyber intelligence with a view to Interpol's sharing it among its 190 member countries seeking to protect cyberspace and investigate cybercriminals,” Interpol said in a statement earlier this week.

According to Group-IB, a leading Russian cybersecurity research firm, the global damage resulting from cybercrime totaled $12.5 billion in 2011, which is $5.5 billion more than in 2010. So far this year, hacker attacks have hit a range of major IT companies and social networks, including Apple, Twitter, Facebook and Microsoft.