The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, Francis Maude, published a set of plans on Friday outlining the UK’s goals over the next four years that will introduce sweeping changes to the nation’s cyber security posture.
In all, Maude said that the plan is to spend £650m GBP over the next four year on a National Cyber Security Program (NCSP), designed to make the UK, “one of the most secure places in the world to do business.”
The plan calls for help from the private sector to address cybercrime and intellectual property theft costs, which are cutting into the country’s GDP, 6-percent of which comes from Internet business.
“So we must take steps to preserve this growth, by tackling cyber crime and bolstering our defenses, to ensure that confidence in the internet as a way of communicating and transacting remains,” Maude said.
In addition to protecting business interests online, the NCSP will create a Cyber Crime Unit within the National Crime Agency, set to be fully operational by 2013.
“This unit will build on the ground-breaking work of the Metropolitan Police’s eCrime Unit by expanding the deployment of ‘cyber-specials’ giving police forces across the country the necessary skills and experience to handle cyber crimes. We will also ensure that the police use existing powers to ensure that cyber criminals are appropriately sanctioned as well as introducing a new single reporting system to report financially motivated cyber crime through the existing Action Fraud reporting centre,” Maude added.
The plan also calls for improved military defense capabilities, similar to those here in the US, without actually coming out and saying that cyber attacks could be met with military force, as the Pentagon did shortly before the holiday.
“…this strategy outlines the creation of a new Joint Cyber Unit hosted by GCHQ which will develop our military capabilities to give the UK a comparative advantage in cyberspace.”
Another point of interest for the NCSP is the focus on improved awareness and end user training, including a partnership with ISPs to introduce infection notices and mitigation steps.
The entire document is online can be found here.