Last November, UK Chancellor George Osborne announced the development of a new National Cyber Security Centre, aiming to enhance IT talent at the GCHQ while working with international partners to respond more efficiently and quickly to online attacks.
Today, Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, Matt Hancock, confirmed that the UK’s latest cyber security agency will be called the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).
The NCSC will be based out of London and is set to open in October 2016. Ciaran Martin, Director of General Cyber, and Dr. Ian Levy, Technical Director of Cyber Security at GCHQ will take their respective positions at the NCSC.
This new agency will be the authoritative voice on all things information security for the UK, and their first line of business will be working alongside the Bank of England to produce advice for the financial industry for how to manage cyber security effectively.
With the UK being one of the world’s capitals for finance, it should come as no surprise that nearly 90 percent of large UK companies experienced a breach within the last year. Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, even warned the finance industry earlier this year that cybercrime would be a major threat to the City’s financial stability.
This first project is vital in helping ensure that all businesses regardless of size or industry understand the threats we’re facing and how to best mitigate them.
According to the Cabinet’s latest press release, the NCSC will adopt structured consultation with the private sector. The NCSC’s objectives are to:
- Raise awareness of government intent
- Undertake genuine dialogue that shapes service delivery
- Demonstrate serious commitment to listening
- Develop sustainable engagement channels
The NCSC will inform, support, and educate the entire UK business community about emerging cyber threats and how to stay safe online in an effort to protect national security and their economic success.
The UK faces a multitude of cyber threats from states, crime gangs, hacking groups, and terrorists. Over the past few months, the UK has proposed various bills like the Investigatory Powers Bill, which would increase the online powers of security services by legitimizing the bulk collection of data and ability to hack into computers and smartphones. Many critics claim this bill is a way for security services to gain more surveillance controls, but officials argue that these powers are necessary to protect the country from terrorists and crime. In addition, the UK also announced allocating they’ll be allocating £1.9 billion to cybercrime & surveillance by 2020.
Ultimately, the NCSC is responsible for ensuring that the people, private & public sector, as well as the critical infrastructure of the UK, are safe online. This agency hopes to transform how the UK tackles cyber security issues by bringing the best of the UK’s cyber expertise together.
As weak cyber security is currently troubling the UK, it’s important to take the right steps towards implementing best in class security solutions to help ward off any potential cyber-attacks. If organizations want to maintain security and minimize the likelihood of a financial fallout from these cyber-attacks, they need to realize the likelihood of stopping all breaches is unlikely, but a preventative approach can be the best way to stop them. NNT Change Tracker Gen7 provides organizations with Non-stop, continuous visibility of what’s going on in your IT environment, allowing an organization to at least spot unusual change that represents a breach in real time and take action before any damage is done.
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