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Ciaran Martin, CEO of the NCSC, speaking at CyberSec in Brussels (20/02/19).

Think Global, Act Global: cyberspace and emerging technology

Thank you to Izabela Albrycht and her colleagues at CyberSec for hosting this excellent conference and for inviting me. CyberSec is an outstanding institution making a very positive contribution to global cyber security.

I’m very proud to represent the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, a part of GCHQ, our signals intelligence agency. It is a pleasure to be among friends discussing our shared aim of improving our digital environment.

Our commitment to working with partners here on the European continent is unshakeable. Whatever form the future relationship between the UK and the European Union takes beyond 29 March this year, the Prime Minister and her Cabinet have long made clear that our support to European security as a whole is unconditional.

More practically, within the cyber security sphere, it is objectively true that nearly all of the functions of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre fall outside the scope of EU competence. It follows that our enhanced cooperation with European partners, and the EU as a whole, in cyber security over recent years is not automatically affected by the UK’s changing relationship with the EU. Pretty much everything we do now to help European partners, and what you do to help us, on cyber security can, should, and I am confident will continue beyond 29 March.

Over the past few years we have shared classified and other threat data with the vast majority of member states and with the institutions. We have also, we hope, played an important role in the development of European thinking in areas like standards and incident response. We hope we’ve helped through our work with CERT-EU on incidents and with ENISA and ETSI on standards.

As the next phase of the UK’s relationship with the rest of Europe takes shape, we will want to take these partnerships further and to develop new ones. I am proud of the increasing frequency with which I see my European counterparts and the deepening friendships we have nurtured, the boundaries we are removing and the ground we are breaking. The protection of our shared values of freedom, democracy and prosperity, all underpinned by the rule of law, is what we strive for.

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