Cyber crime continues to grow and has the potential to undermine confidence in the internet. Hence among other things a Government proposal to recruit ‘Cyber Reservists’ to the Ministry of Defence. The armed forces will engage more experts to support their work in defending against the growth in cyber threats. These will be supporting roles to the Joint Cyber Units across cyber-security and information assurance. A series of events are being held with industry on how the scheme will work. A further announcement will be made spring 2013. So Cabinet Office ministers Francis Maude and Chloe Smith told the IA 12 (Information Assurance 2012) conference in London in December.
The ministers spoke of a need to develop and spread best practice, encourage the right market structures and provide incentives to ensure that managing cyber risk is recognised as integral to good business practice: “We want boards, customers and investors to think about cyber security issues when they are making purchasing or investment decisions.”
The Government proposes to extend ‘kite marking’ of cyber security products and services to stimulate the market by guiding potential purchasers to those that have been assessed by Government to meet standards. This activity will build on the Cyber Incident Response pilot launched by CESG and CPNI in November, which accredited four companies as reaching the required standards to provide certain cyber security services.
GCHQ will also promote and develop its Commercial Product Assurance scheme, which gives institutions confidence that the security features of the products they buy to manage their cyber risks are effective. The first product assured under the scheme has already saved HMRC £2.4m. To manage information risks in the digital age, Government will be making much greater use of these sorts of commercially assured products.
For more visit the Cabinet Office website – http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/news/cyber-security-strategy-one-year.
