The UK Will Be Hit By A Category One Cyber-Attack
The UK has not yet faced what would be considered a ‘category one’ cyber-attack, but there is little doubt that it will happen in the years ahead, according to Peter Yapp, the deputy director at the National Cyber Security Centre, which is a core part of the UK government intelligence agency, GCHQ.
Speaking at the inaugural Cyber Security Connect UK conference held in Monaco recently, Yapp explained that since the NCSC was launched over two years ago, it had dealt with 1100 cyber security incidents, or more than 10 a week.
“The majority of these incidents were from hostile nation states, meaning computer hackers that are directed, sponsored or tolerated by governments of those countries and these are the most acute and direct cyber security threats to our national security,” he said.
As a result of these continuing attacks, and the looming prospect of being hit by a devastating category one attack, Yapp suggested that the UK had to be alert to the threat from countries who sought to attack its critical national networks.
“That’s why earlier this year, the NCSC joined forces with the US government to publish evidence that Russia had attacked critical parts of our national infrastructure. This was a landmark act, as it called out both unacceptable practices but also provided the tools to clean up that particular attack,” Yapp claimed.
However, while the nation states represent the most acute threat, it is low sophistication, high volume cyber-attacks that are the ones most likely to cause the average British citizen harm, he added. This is because the incidents themselves can damage individuals and businesses but more importantly, can undermine the confidence citizens have in the digital economy.
Yapp emphasised that the NCSC has some of the best experts in the world working at NCSC to help combat the threat, but said that cybercrime doesn’t need to be beaten as this is unrealistic, but that NCSC and other government agencies need to make it as challenging, unprofitable and risky as possible for perpetrators.
One example of the work that NCSC has done is the active cyber defence (ACD) initiative, which uses automation to reduce some of the most common weaknesses in the UK’s cyber security defences.
“The programme aims to take away as much of the harm from as many people as we can, as often as we can, and this reduces the damage done by high volume cyber-attacks and frees our world class experts to focus on the most potent attacks,” Yapp said.
The programme has helped to slash the proportion of phishing sites hosted in the UK by 5.3% to 2.4%.
Yapp, who was speaking to C-level information security executive delegates, suggested that the next step was to equip every organisation with the tools they needed to protect themselves, starting with a better understanding of the risks.
“We aren’t asking organisations and citizens to have the same security as a nation state, but they do need to be good enough to repel the most common threats and contain those threats that do make it through. So understanding how cyber-attacks work is vital of getting ahead of the programme,” he said.
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