UK Sets Up Cyber Response Teams, Allocates £70M To Improve Capabilities

UK’s Minister of Defense Equipment Philip Dunne today announced the formation of cyber response unit.

“Our new Joint Forces Command, which stood up in April this year, leads on that response, ensuring that we consider cyber in all of our future planning and operations; that we have in place the structures and capabilities to operate and defend our systems against cyber attack; and that we have made the vital investment in our people to ensure they have the skills and training needed to do so,” he said.

The Global Operations and Security Control Centre, based at Corsham, just outside Bath, is at the heart of this operation, according to Dunne.

The cyber response unit will bring together key network providers with the military teams who are able to make minute to minute decisions on the priorities for network operation and defence. 

“Following the decision by the National Security Council to place the potential threat from cyber as a Tier one threat to the nation as we heard earlier, along with International Terrorism and a major national ecological disaster, this Government committed £650 million to improve cyber security within the UK. 

On top of the money allocated to the MOD from this fund in 2010, we have also allocated a further £70M over the next 4 years from within our own budget for improving our cyber defence capabilities,” he added.

Dunne also announced that the MoD has established a partnership with nine of the UK’s largest contractors to raise awareness of cyber security as an issue, both internally and amongst their sub-contracting supply chain; exchanging information on threats and vulnerabilities; and working with the government to drive up the standards of cyber security throughout the supply chain. 

BAE Systems, British Telecom, EADS, Hewlett Packard, Lockheed Martin, Logica (CGI), Rolls Royce, Selex ES and Thales have been selected to build national resilience against cyber attack.