The UK Government finally gets proactive online
At a briefing yesterday, the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown unveiled the UK National Security Strategy, and for the first time ever, it included a strategy for combating cyber crime.
The plan is to create a centrally controlled agency called the Office of Cyber Security. This office will liaise with industry and law enforcement agencies and co-ordinate research and investigate laws and ethics with regard to online or ‘cybercrime’. At the same time another arm called the Cyber Security Operation Centre, based at GCHQ in Cheltenham, England will take a more active role. GCHQ is the UK’s intelligence gathering headquarters, which is home to most of the analysts and technicians that make intelligence gathering possible.
The Cyber Security Operation Centre or CSOC will start small with only twenty or thirty staff and will begin collating information and evidence on what kind of attacks can be expected now and in the future. In the longer term the team will develop methods and strategies that will combat these kinds of attacks. Part of the remit of CSOC is to actively prevent criminals and terrorists attacking Britain’s online infrastructure. Not only to protect the government but business too. At least ninety percent of UK bank transactions happen online, and although the banks have their own cyber crime teams, they welcome the national scheme. Especially if the CSOC have been given the freedom to actively seek out and take down people who present a risk to the UK. This active component is what everybody is talking about. Unlike traditional law enforcement they aren’t going to wait until something happens before investigating. They are going to be proactive and assess probabilities as well as existing scenarios.
Under this proactive guise investigators will be actively seeking wrongdoers and will have the technology and authority to do something about it. Although the words ‘Denial of service attacks’ were mentioned the spokesman wouldn’t comment on whether that was COSC defending against them or using them offensively.
The team will be made up of a mixture of civil servants from the Ministry of Defence, MI5 and the police. They will also be recruiting leading security specialists from around the world to add badly needed skills to the operation.
When asked this morning about the new elements of the UK National Security Strategy, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said;
“Just as in the 19th century we had to secure the seas for our national safety and prosperity, and the 20th century we had to secure the air, in the 21st century we also have to secure our position in cyber space in order to give people and businesses the confidence they need to operate safely there.”
Although the new strategy is welcomed by everyone, some business analysts have wondered aloud why it has taken so long. After all the internet has been around commercially for almost fifteen years, and only now are the government catching up with the outside world. Nevertheless they welcome the move cautiously, waiting to see if it bears fruit before offering full support.
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