UK To Increase National Cyber Defences
Automatic defences to stop hackers hijacking websites or spoofing official domains will get a boost from a £1.9bn UK government cybersecurity strategy.
UK Chancellor Philip Hammond is expected to give details of the plans shortly. The strategy will help enlarge specialist police units that tackle organised online gangs. Other defences that intercept booby-trapped emails or shut down thieves impersonating bank websites will also be expanded. Some cash will go towards education and training of cybersecurity experts.
Background
In September, Yahoo confirmed that 500 million user details had been accessed in a historic data breach. Last December, a cyber-attack on a western Ukrainian electricity distribution company caused a major power outage affecting 220,000 customers and causing an electricity blackout in the region. And earlier this year, a hacker accessed the payment system of the Bangladesh Central Bank in an attempt to transfer $951 million (£779m) fraudulently, successfully pocketing $81 million before the authorities stepped in.
No longer the stuff of spy thrillers and action movies, cyber-attacks are a reality and they are happening now. Our adversaries are varied: organised criminal groups, hacktivists, untrained teenagers and foreign states.
Attacks can cause economic damage, erode public trust in online services and by enabling fraud do real harm to individuals, their property and their privacy. The Ukrainian attack shows the potential for the most worrying scenario: cyber-attacks by sophisticated actors designed to disrupt essential services, like energy, water and transport networks.
UK Plans
The plans will set out action needed to protect the UK economy and the privacy of British citizens, and will also encourage industry to ramp up efforts to prevent cyber-attacks. Mr Hammond said Britain "must now keep up with the scale and pace of the threats we face".
"Our new strategy... will allow us to take even greater steps to defend ourselves in cyberspace and to strike back when we are attacked," he added.
Ben Gummer, paymaster general, said in a statement: "No longer the stuff of spy thrillers and action movies, cyber-attacks are a reality and they are happening now. "Our adversaries are varied - organised criminal groups, 'hacktivists', untrained teenagers and foreign states."
Finding talent
The £1.9bn to pay for the national strategy was allocated last year and will fund the programme until the end of 2020.
In its strategy, the government explained what some of the money has been spent on already.
With the aid of industry, it has set up automated systems that limit how much malware and spam reaches UK citizens. Other projects have helped the government verify where emails come from to thwart specific tax fraud campaigns aimed at the UK.
Future spending plans involved cash for recruiting more than 50 specialists who will work at the cybercrime unit at the National Crime Agency. These will help tackle organised gangs and aim to raise the cost of engaging in hi-tech crime to make it much less attractive.
The cyber-plan will also involve the creation of a Cyber Security Research Institute that aims to unite researchers across the UK's universities to work together on improving defences for smartphones, laptops and tablets.
Security-based start-ups will also get help via an innovation fund that will commercialise work on novel tools and defences. A national scheme will also be set up to retrain "high-aptitude professionals" as cybersecurity experts.
Prof Alan Woodward, a computer security expert from the University of Surrey, said he hoped the government spent cash on the "high volume, low sophistication attacks" that plague people and cause the majority of financial losses.
"I hope the £1.9bn will be spent in growing talent," he said. "The government talk about 50 recruits here and 50 there. I'm afraid we need many more."
Prof Woodward said it was getting "increasingly difficult" to persuade young people to study computer science and getting them to try cybersecurity was "a real headache".
"I would really like to see money put into reaching young people early enough to influence the subjects they decide upon at school and pairing an image for them of just how interesting and rewarding a career in cybersecurity can be," he said.
