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Cyber really is a team sport, says Lindy Cameron in the fourth annual review of the UK’s official National Cyber Security Centre, a part of GCHQ. She’s the NCSCโs second Chief Executive Officer, taking over recently from Ciaran Martin.
The NCSC has often been described as world-leading, and that has been evident over the last 12 months, she said. The NCSC ‘surged’ to assist the UKโs response to the pandemic. She said: “More than 200 of the 723 incidents the NCSC handled this year related to coronavirus and we have deployed experts to support the health sector, including NHS Trusts, through cyber incidents they have faced. We scanned more than one million NHS IP addresses for vulnerabilities and our cyber expertise underpinned the creation of the UKโs coronavirus tracing app.”
The NCSC ‘liaised’ with some 1,283 ‘ESPs’ (essential service providers) responding to covid-19, such as online supermarkets, haulage companies, manufacturers of ventilator, healthcare suppliers, supply chain companies and charities.
Apart from coronavirus, the NCSC reviewed ‘high-risk vendors’ such as the Chinese tech firm Huawei โ ‘and in particular the swift and thorough review of US sanctions against Huawei’. The NCSC gave advice on the impact these changes would have in the UK.
She hailed ‘strong partnerships internationally and domestically’; work with law enforcement โ ‘particularly the National Crime Agency‘ โ and across government, industry, academia and with the public; during lockdown the NCSC launched a suspicious email reporting service. That has led to more than 2.3 million reports of malicious emails being flagged. “Many of the 22,000 malicious URLs taken down as a result related to coronavirus scams, such as pretending to sell PPE equipment to hide a cyber attack.”
For the 128-page review in full visit https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/news/annual-review-2020.
Comments
Jude McCorry, CEO of the Scottish Business Resilience Centre said: โItโs not surprising that cyber criminals have exploited so many individuals and businesses at a time when they have been extremely vulnerable. From ransomware to fake shop fronts scamming many unsuspecting individuals, now more than ever it is absolutely vital that we each take the time to pause and to ensure that we have systems fit for purpose to deal with such attacks โ and on the occasion where they might happen, know how to swiftly deal with them. Resilience on many levels has been a theme which has emerged during 2020, but by no means will we be out of the woods when the clocks chime on 2021. Businesses and individuals must ensure that they are ready to deal with a cyber incident, and if not, then know who to call on for support.
โThe SBRC has launched many programmes this year to ensure that businesses across Scotland are fit for purpose when it comes to cyber security; from the launch of our Incident Response line to our extensive Exercise in a Box training programme to help businesses across every inch of the country. Scotland plc is a valuable brand, and we are passionate about making sure that the business landscape comes out of the other end of this pandemic. With so many other external forces placing pressure on companies, if we can ease some of that by ensuring their cyber resilience practices and processes are in place, then that is one less aspect to worry about. The SBRC Incident Response line has been set in partnership with the Scottish Government. Businesses can reach the cyber incident helpline by calling 01786 437 472 weekdays 9am-5pm.โ
And David Carroll, Managing Director at Nominet Cyber said that Nominet was proud of its involvement, delivering PDNS. “In particular, the report shows a real rallying of the troops as the pandemic began to hit and a concerted effort not to let our defence fall as a nation.
โAs rightly put in this report, it takes a team. The cyber threats we face are vast. Malware comes in many shapes and sizes and the findings that ransomware has seen such an increase, is indicative of this worsening threat. We must use all the resources we have available. Technology which stretches across the breadth of the public sector but has depth in its execution. We need to encourage diversity and stimulate interest in cyber security among those at the very start of their education, to ensure we have adequate expertise. Partnerships will also be essential to tapping into unrivalled knowledge and experience.
“Under testing circumstances, NCSCโs cyber defences have continued to be resilient while covering more ground than ever before. To deliver this protection at scale, with such an imminent threat as the pandemic, is nothing short of impressive.โ
And Alex Pinto, Lead Author of the Verizon Business Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), said that cybercriminals have continued to use tried-and-tested methods to obtain data and they are working even better and harder during this unprecedented disruption.
He said: โVerizonโs 2020 DBIR showed the scale of this problem pre-pandemic was already out of control as over 80% of breaches were caused by stolen or brute-forced credentials. The pandemic has also led to an uptick in human errors from misconfiguration to misdelivery, often as organisations have been operating with reduced staff due to illness or furlough, further compounding the problem.
โAs campaigns and phishing attacks have also used coronavirus themes to exploit people itโs understandable there is a heightened emotional response and higher success rate. In our recent research into the impact COVID-19 has had on the cyberthreat landscape, we found phishing emails relating to COVID-19 have a higher click rate than those unrelated, with some organisations reporting click rates of over 50 percent.โ
Paul Farrington (previous CTO for Business Banking Innovation at Barclays and now EMEA CTO at Veracode) says it’s essential that UK businesses and services secure their applications and, therefore, remote work. He said: โIf the pandemic has taught us anything about cyber security, it is that business agility is dependent on how easily people can leverage enabling technologies such as web conferencing. The findings from the new NCSC report, which revealed a 10pc rise in cyberattacks, prove just how much businesses and users depend on software that is often vulnerable to attack. As companies continue to deploy their infrastructure into online environments, they will need to build security into the software development pipeline as early as possible.”
Miles Tappin, VP of EMEA for ThreatConnect, said: โTo defend against opportunistic malicious actors, an โall for one, one for allโ approach is needed. Suspicion surrounding the concept of collaborating needs to be surmounted and allied organisations and countries need to move towards a unified approach to cybersecurity based on information sharing communities rather than a fragmented organisation-by-organisation system. A more organised, combined approach will bring about collective security โ one that pools together the resources and knowledge we have at our fingertips to assess the current threat environment.โ
