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Jeremy Fleming, in speech at CYBERUK, promises to increase collaboration to create an “automated cyber-defence system” across the UK.

The Director of GCHQ, Jeremy Fleming, today announced that the cyber security arm of GCHQ, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), will increase its collaboration with the private and public sectors in order to share information about potential cyber security attacks in a matter of seconds. In turn, this will help businesses and consumers respond to attacks quicker. 

During his speech, Fleming highlighted the successful work of the NCSC thus far, with their analysts already sharing “time-critical, secret information” with, for example, operators of critical national infrastructure. This has yielded much success with, for example, the NCSC’s Active Cyber Defence (ACD) programme which has reduced the proportion of phishing emails that emanate from British computers from 5.4 per cent globally in 2016 to less than 2 per cent today. 

However, in the future, the agency will declassify and promptly share information such as whether an attack is emanating from a nation state or details of malware used by cyber-criminals “in a matter of seconds” and with “just one click”. 

Commenting on the speech, techUK’s Head of Cyber Talal Rajab said:

“In the two plus years of its existence, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has played a crucial role in protecting UK businesses and consumers and giving timely, technical advice and guidance to a range of sectors.

“Jeremy Fleming’s speech today is an important acknowledgement that the NCSC can do more and scale its capability in sharing time-critical information with industry. Making the UK a safe place to do business online requires a collective effort from all – government, private sector and individuals – and techUK welcomes GCHQ’s efforts to make this a reality”