UK to increase national cyber-defence grid

Automatic defences to stop hackers hijacking websites or spoofing official domains will get a boost from a £1.9bn government cybersecurity strategy.

Other defences that intercept booby-trapped emails or shut down thieves impersonating bank websites will also be expanded.  The strategy will also help enlarge specialist police units that tackle organised online gangs. Some cash will go towards education and training of cybersecurity experts.

‘No longer the stuff of spy thrillers and action movies, cyber-attacks are a reality and they are happening now,’ said Ben Gummer, paymaster general, in a statement. ‘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.

Source: BBC