Tri-Service

UK Doubles Cyber Spending

Britain is to double the money it spends on cyber security.

Chancellor George Osborne made the announcement in a speech at GCHQ in Cheltenham, home of the UK’s cyber capabilities.

£1.9 billion will now go towards cyber over the next five years. On top of money devoted to cyber security elsewhere in government, it takes the total cyber spend over that period to £3.2 billion.

The new National Cyber Plan has five key planks:

Active Defence – being more proactive in blocking malicious traffic.
A National Cyber Centre – a single point of contact for public facing cyber security work, bringing together the secret work of GCHQ with advice services.
Cyber Skills – enhancing the UK’s skill base through, for instance, a new Institute of Coding.
Support to Industry – including the creation of two Cyber Innovation Centres to further encourage the nascent cyber security industry.
A National Offensive Cyber Programme – further developing the ability to strike back against a virtual adversary.

It is this last point which is perhaps most controversial.

Britain is one of the only countries in the world to now openly admit to having its own state sponsored hacking programme.

The Chancellor revealed the offensive programme is a partnership between GCHQ and the MOD and said it would now be further developed.

His speech was couched in terms of a threat from Islamic State, although it is unclear how much that emphasis is affected by the weekend’s events in Paris.

It is in fact the actions of nation states which have long been considered the most dangerous in cyberspace, with Russia and China both singled out for mention on MI5’s website.

No matter how uneasy security relations might be with those countries though, either would be extraordinarily unlikely to use cyber attack to kill people.

The same, though, cannot be said of Islamic State.