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Gordon Brown looks set to follow the lead of Barack Obama, the US president, by unveiling a cyber security centre to tackle the threats facing government and business. Initial details of the prime minister’s announcement suggest the centre will advise Whitehall and enterprise on defending themselves from organised attacks on their IT systems. It should come later this month as the central plank of a new national security strategy from No 10, according to the Guardian, which reported the details yesterday. If accurate, the disclosures suggest the centre will be run by a high profile body, while the Cabinet Office will coordinate the cyber security response across Whitehall. It is likely to work with the new Police Central e-crime Unit , which is tasked to work with agencies fighting international and serious organised crime groups operating on the internet. However whereas the unit will crackdown on online offences, like fraud, the centre’s main focus will be on the threat of hacking by foreign powers, criminal gangs and terror groups. Only six months ago, insiders at the Ministry of Defence spoke out after the IT systems for three quarters of the Royal Navy’s fleet were brought down by a computer virus. The malicious program was also blamed for diverting the confidential emails of UK defence staff to a server believed to be in Russia, yet the MoD denied the attack was state-authored. Attempts to get every ministry in Whitehall to come clean about cyber attacks they suffered, by using freedom of information rules, were subsequently blocked by the government. As a result, the new centre is seen as a change of tack in how the state address cyber crime, for potentially ending its days as a low profile issue handed to a few tight-lipped agencies. The centre’s head may be appointed as the UK’s cyber security ‘tsar’ – a role that the US administration has created for a single official to oversee the nation’s response to hacking attempts. Jun 16, 2009 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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