There is no new news in acknowledging that we are all living in an increasingly connected world, whether that be at home, work or in education. What is evolving, almost on a weekly basis, however are the threats we all face at a personal, business and national level from cyber-crime as highlighted in the government cyber strategy.
With the release of the UK Governments National Cyber Strategy 2022 on Wednesday, we are somewhat encouraged to see a Government focused on ensuring we can continue to work and live in a democratic and safe way, and who have a key focus on cyber resilience. The Strategy foucses on 5 pillars with core themes of strength, resilience and leadership, whilst ensuring that we are all better protected across all aspects of private, professional and public life.
With the continuous evolution of cyber threats the Strategy cites many positive funding developments totalling £2.6bn over the coming 3 years to ensure the goals within are met, and this funding will go a long way towards the need to keep our cyber defences evolving alongside the developing threat landscape.
Government, rightly so, recognise that they alone cannot achieve the goals set out in the Strategy. There is a focus on the shared responsibilities across the UK citing that “Businesses and organisations have a responsibility to ensure they are effectively managing their cyber risks, to become cyber resilient and to support their customers and the people who use their services”.
Also the strategy references larger technology providers who are critical to the supply highlighting that “They need to ensure the services they offer are ‘secure by default’ and are not overly dependent on their customers taking protective actions”. We have been sharing a lot about the importance of supply chain in the last week elsewhere on our blog, it’s continued importance in the cyber resilience of UK industry will be a major focus in 2022 we feel.
Alongside industry there is a continued focus on and investment in embedding cyber defences in to law enforcement via National, Regional and Local Cyber Crime Units, alongside Action Fraud. Further to this it is great to hear that two initiatives which we are involved in at CyberScale, namely Cyber Resilience Centres and Cyber Security Clusters, are being supported going forwards – as outlined below.
The Strategy will “deliver more integrated and effective regional cyber networks across the UK, enabling stronger partnerships between government, businesses and academia to support sectoral growth and business resilience. We will work with regional cyber clusters and the recently established UK Cyber Cluster Collaboration (UKC3), the growing number of regional cyber innovation centres and Cyber Resilience Centres, strengthening links between local businesses, academic centres of excellence and law enforcement”.
With our Director & Principal Security Consultant Darren Chapman being on the Advisory Group of both the Eastern & East Midlands Resilience Centres, and a central driving force behind a soon to be re-launched East of England Cluster, we are motivated to be at the centre of these initiatives.
This strategy showcases an exciting time for the UK Cyber sector with a strong focus on technologies that will further the UK’s cyber capabilities and ability to better manage and process data, information and secure business operations. Coupled with a focus on skills and advancing cyber businesses, the Strategy will go a long way in futureproofing the whole of the UK for an ever more connected society.