The new leader of the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre warned the country has reached an inflection point where malicious actors are actively working to weaponize the country’s dependence on the digital economy.
Richard Horne, CEO of the NCSC, said state-linked as well as criminal threat groups are targeting the U.K.'s critical infrastructure and other key services for espionage, data theft and possible destructive purposes, in a speech Tuesday at the agency’s London headquarters.
The U.K. is one of the closest allies the U.S. has in cyberspace, sharing threat intelligence and close cooperation in joint law enforcement actions. It also has one of the world’s most sophisticated digital economies, but Horne said the very nature of that dependence is making it more vulnerable to malicious hackers.
“It is underpinned by online infrastructure, which we all rely on to keep the lights on and the water running, to improve our public services, to keep businesses running and to drive our growth and prosperity,” Horne said. “But those critical systems and services make attractive targets for hostile states and malicious actors in cyberspace.”
The speech, which echoes warnings from U.S. cybersecurity leaders, is linked to the country’s 8th annual review of its cyber posture. The NCSC incident management team responded to 430 incidents over the past year, compared with 371 in the prior year.
Horne called on all sectors of the U.K. government and private sector to take additional action to address the threat, which he described as more serious than what is being addressed. He warned that more regulatory work and stronger reporting requirements would likely be necessary.
Horne cited the impact of a June ransomware attack against pathology services provider Synnovis, which led to a major blood shortage in the U.K. Horne also cited an October 2023 attack against the British Library.
Similar to threats targeting the U.S., the U.K. has faced considerable cyber risk from groups linked to Russia and China.
Pat McFadden, chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, warned in a November speech that Russia is targeting NATO members with malicious hacking in connection with the Ukraine war. Russia has deployed state-linked hackers alongside hacktivist and criminal cyber gangs that have been allowed to operate from inside Russia.
Horne, in his speech Tuesday, warned that threat activity from China-linked actors against the U.S. telecom sector also posed a risk to U.K. data.
“Now, given the global interconnectivity in telecommunications, we at the NCSC judge that there is almost certainly a threat to U.K. data from opportunistic collection as a result,” Horne said.
The speech comes at a time when U.K. supermarkets and other companies are recovering from a ransomware attack against Blue Yonder, an Arizona-based provider of supply chain software.
