Queen opens new National Cyber Security Centre
The Queen has formally opened the UK’s new National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which is tasked with defending the country against cyber attacks.
The centre, officially part of GCHQ, replaces a range of other government agencies that had cyber security responsibility, including the CCA, CESG, CERT UK and more.
The NCSC, the spearhead of the government’s £1.9 billion cyber security investment, will perform a variety of roles including advising businesses and public bodies on security issues and managing incident response for major security breaches.
The opening of the centre - which has actually been operational since last October - comes as government research shows many British businesses are not fully prepared to fight the rising threat presented by hackers.
Two-thirds of large businesses experienced a cyber breach or attack in 2016 and 90 per cent of companies don’t have an incident management plan in place should a cyber breach occur. Take a look at hSo’s free guide to business continuity and disaster recovery for support on recovering from serious incidents like cyber attacks.
The Queen’s guided tour of the centre included demonstrations by NCSC staff of the UK’s past, present and future cyber threats and finished with the unveiling of a commemorative plaque to mark its opening.
The NCSC’s technical director Dr Ian Levy said: “We’re actively working to reduce the harm caused by cyber attacks against the UK and will use the government as a guinea pig for all the measures we want to see done by industry at national scale.
“This includes everything from free website vulnerability scanning for public sector and proactively taking down tens of thousands of phishing sites, to our world-leading CyberFirst campaign to encourage teenagers to become tomorrow’s cyber security pioneers.
“These initiatives illustrate the sort of cutting edge innovation the NCSC will spearhead to make Britain as safe as possible to both live and work online – and we’ll do it transparently, driven by evidence and publishing our results.”
Since going operational, the NCSC said its work had included helping public sector organisations find vulnerabilities in their websites and taking down thousands of phishing sites targeting the UK.
