The United Kingdom Parliament’s Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy is launching an inquiry into cybersecurity, the committee said Monday.
Committee chair Margaret Beckett MP noted that while the internet has changed everybody’s daily lives and opened up new opportunities “it has also created new vulnerabilities. The nation security implications of the leap to cyber are a matter of increasing concern.”
Referring to the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign hacks by Russia (Defense Daily, Jan. 6), she added, “Attention has recently focused on the potential exploitation of the cyber domain by other states and associated actors for political purposes, but this is just one source of threat that the Government must address through its recently launched five-year strategy.”
Beckett is a member of the British Labor Party and former Foreign Secretary of the U.K. from 2006-2007.
The committee covers the second National Cyber Security Strategy that was launched in November 2016. That strategy budgeted over $2 billion for cybersecurity from 2016 to 2021 (Defense Daily, Nov. 4, 2016). The U.K. government also said it would treat a cyber attack as seriously as a conventional attack.
The parliamentary committee is interested in submissions that address several issues. These include:
- the types and sources of cyber threats faced by the U.K.;
- the effectiveness and coherence of the strategic lead provided by the National Security Council, Departments, agencies, and the National Cyber Security Center;
- learning points drawn from the first Cyber Security Strategy and the fitness for purpose of the second Cyber Security Strategy;
- whether the U.K. has committed sufficient human, financial and technical resources to address the scale of cyber security challenge;
- the development of offensive cyber capabilities and the norms governing their use;
- ways in which the U.K. government can work with the private sector to build cyber resilience and cyber skills;
- the balance of responsibilities between the government and private sector in protecting critical national infrastructure;
- the appropriate role for government in regulating and legislating in relation to cyber both nationally and internationally; and
- how the U.K. can co-operate with allies and partners on the development of capabilities, standard setting and intelligence sharing.