News reaction: UK Cabinet Office highlights NCC Group contribution in National Cyber Strategy progress report

Back at the end of 2021, the UK Government published its National Cyber Strategy, setting out its vision for how the country can continue to be a leading responsible and democratic cyber power.

Establishing a framework for transforming how cyber security is approached across the economy, the strategy placed a partnership between government and the UK cyber security industry at its heart.

This week, the Cabinet Office published a progress report highlighting how the UK is delivering on its strategic pillars and setting out its priorities for the year ahead.

In a sign that the ‘whole-of-society’ approach to cyber resilience is cementing in the UK, the report points to core initiatives that are being delivered jointly by the public and private sector on everything from cyber skills and ‘Secure-by-Design’ through to the development of new cyber rules and global standards engagement. This includes leading research into enterprise IoT security undertaken by NCC Group on behalf of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology that will be used to inform the UK’s approach to securing smart devices used by businesses.

Group Head of Strategy and Public Affairs, Kat Sommer, takes a look at the key points and shares her thoughts on how NCC Group is proud to have made a contribution to the progress.

“It is wonderful to see the progress against each of the five pillars that were established in this world leading strategy, and even more so to see how NCC Group has contributed to each of these priority areas. We really are supporting the Strategy’s ambitions across the board, to:

• "Take the lead in the technologies vital to cyber power": As the progress report highlights, we have worked with the UK Government to deliver a research project into the potential vulnerabilities in popular enterprise IoT devices used by UK businesses.

• "Advance UK global leadership and influence": We participated in the UK-Singapore Cyber Dialogue and represented the industry voice at the United Nations' intersessional consultation on a new cybercrime convention.
  
  
• "Strengthen the UK cyber ecosystem": We are supporting key Government-led initiatives and events such as CyberUK 2023, CyberFirst and the UK Cyber Security Council.
  
  
• "Build a resilient and prosperous digital UK": We bring our frontline cyber security expertise into the policy-making process, and inform the Government's thinking on key cyber resilience policies such as software security, evolving Network and Information Systems (NIS) rules and the ‘Cyber Duty to Protect’ programme.
  
  
• "Detect our adversaries": We continue to play a leading role in advocating for the UK's cybercrime laws to be updated to better protect cyber security professionals undertaking legitimate threat intelligence research.

We are genuinely excited to have made the impact we have. We hugely look forward to continue doing so, over the next twelve months of the Strategy’s delivery – particularly across such critical focus areas as AI security, critical national infrastructure and software resilience. ”