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This MoU sets out the intention of both organisations to work together to help protect personal data from cyberattacks through:

• sharing of technical information from cyber incident investigations (but no personal data),  where appropriate, and where it is related to cybercrime and fraud;
• sharing and exchange of information and intelligence which enhances the ability to identify cyber threats, risks and trends;
• joint research or studies to improve each parties’ understanding of the cyber landscape including its size, actors operating therein and the business models they are adopting

The Global Cyber Alliance is an international non-profit organisation dedicated to reducing cyber risk. Since its founding in 2015 the organization has embarked on several efforts to achieve its mission: the founding of Quad9, a global protective DNS service that blocks an average of 60 Million malicious domains a day, advocating for the deployment of the email authentication protocol known as DMARC, and the release of a series of free cybersecurity toolkits aimed at helping small businesses, journalists, and elections officials (U.S.) improve their cyber security based on best practices defined by the Center for Internet Security and the UK National Cyber Security Centre.

Steve Eckersley, Director of Investigations, ICO, said:

“The Information Commissioner’s Office is the UK independent regulator responsible for upholding information rights and people’s privacy. Data protection is central to cybersecurity and the ICO is committed to working to protect people’s privacy.

"With cyberattacks on the increase on a global scale, there needs to be a more collaborative approach to tackling them. We therefore look forward to expanding the range of agencies we already have arrangements with and working with the Global Cyber Alliance to share and exchange information to achieve our common goal to reduce UK cybercrime, reduce cyber risk and improve cyber security. The aim is to prevent these harmful attacks which impact not just the organisations they are targeted at, but the people whose personal data is compromised. We know from our trust and confidence work that cyber-attacks are the highest cause for privacy concern of UK residents."