Government Pledges to Strengthen Cybersecurity With New Bill

A woman's hand pressing keys of a laptop keyboard in a file photo. (Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire)

The government has said it will strengthen the UK’s cyber defences with a new law that would expand the remit of existing regulation and give more power to regulators.

Details of the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill outlined in briefing notes accompanying the King’s Speech on Wednesday said that increasing regulation will protect more digital services and critical national infrastructure, which have become “an increasingly attractive threat vector for attackers.”

The government will also increase cyberattack reporting requirements placed on businesses, including where a company has been subject to a ransomware attack, saying it will allow agencies to get a better picture of current vulnerabilities.

“Our essential services are vulnerable to hostile actors and recent cyber attacks affecting the NHS and Ministry of Defence show the impacts can be severe,” the briefing note said.

It added: “We need to take swift action to address vulnerabilities and protect our digital economy to deliver growth. The Bill will strengthen the UK’s cyber defences, ensure that critical infrastructure and the digital services that companies rely on are secure.”

The briefing paper said that in 2011, the total cost of cyberattacks in the UK was in the region of £27 billion a year, and that figure is likely to have increased.

Legislation Must Be Fit for Purpose

Carla Baker, senior director of government affairs for the UK and Ireland at cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks, welcomed the news, saying cybersecurity plays a vital role in building resilience among critical sectors as well as driving economic growth.

“Maintaining the security of the critical national infrastructure in the face of the continually changing threat landscape must be a priority, and we welcome the announcements today,” she said.

Ms. Baker cautioned, however, that “it will be vital that the government work with industry to ensure that security requirements in the legislation are fit for purpose and strike the right balance between building resilience and fostering innovation.”

“If we are to achieve sustained economic growth in the UK, organisations cannot be burdened with overly prescriptive requirements. The government must take a coordinated approach to developing policy interventions that protect critical sectors of society and drive economic growth, and refrain from producing guidance with overlapping or conflicting requirements,” she added.

Ransomware Attack on NHS

The bill was revealed after the UK experienced a number of high-profile cyberattacks in the last year.

On June 3, hackers attacked Synnovis, which provides blood testing services, with ransomware, affecting IT systems at several London hospitals including Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College Hospitals NHS Trust.

The NHS later confirmed that criminals had published the stolen data online.

Disruption to services has lasted for weeks, and as a result of the attack, thousands of appointments and operations were postponed.

In May, the Ministry of Defence shut down a third-party payment system, which holds the names and bank details of military personnel and some veterans, over concerns it had been hacked by malign actors.

China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea Pose Greatest Risk

A significant attack on the UK’s democratic institutions was revealed in March, when then-Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden told the House of Commons that hackers affiliated with the Chinese communist regime had conducted a campaign of online reconnaissance aimed at the email accounts of MPs and peers. They were also responsible for a cyberattack on the Electoral Commission.

In response, the UK sanctioned the Wuhan Xiaoruizhi Science and Technology Company Limited, a front company of the Chinese regime-affiliated hacking group APT31, and Zhao Guangzong and Ni Gaobin, members of APT31.

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)—part of GCHQ and the UK’s technical authority on cyber security—said last year in its annual review that the nation’s critical sectors face “enduring and significant” threats, owing in part to an increase in hostile states and state-sponsored actors engaging in aggressive cyber activity.

CEO of the NCSC Felicity Oswald said during the CyberUK conference in May that Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea “continue to pose the greatest risk to the UK and our allies.”

PA Media contributed to this report.