economic and social value from cyberspace where our actions, guided by our core values,
will enhance prosperity, national security and a strong society. The strategy contains three
main pillars, which the whole of our society has a role in helping to deliver:
Defend our people, businesses and assets across the public and private sectors;
Deter and disrupt our adversaries: states, criminals and hacktivists;
Develop our critical capabilities and grow our cyber security sector.
Building on progress made under our 2011 strategy, the United Kingdom will pursue a more
active and interventionist approach to improve overall levels of cyber security. The National
Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) opened officially in February 2017. It is our definitive
operational authority on cyber security and will lead this approach. The NCSC will act as the
single authoritative voice on cyber security, helping to make the UK a safe place to live and
do business online. The NCSC brings together key organisations that previously worked
separately on cyber security and incorporates law enforcement elements to enhance its
operational work. This is crucial to delivering improved cyber security to the UK.
The United Kingdom’s efforts to tackle cybercrime are led by the National Cyber Crime Unit
(NCCU) in the National Crime Agency (NCA), as well as its extended capability from its
Regional Organised Crime Units (ROCUs). The UK continues to develop technological and
investigative capabilities to support British law enforcement’s ability to tackle the cybercriminal threat. Through these specialist skills, and work with local, national and international
partners, UK efforts focus on understanding the cyber-criminal threat, disrupting cybercrime
activity, protecting the British public and industry, and preventing new actors engaging in
cyber criminality. The NCS use experience and expertise from domestic initiatives to deliver
capacity-building projects to increase the strength and speed of the global response to
cybercrime.
Our new strategy underlines the UK’s commitment to develop the cyber security sector and
a skills base by continuing the integration of cyber security into the education sector,
establishing two innovation centres and launching a £10 million Cyber Innovation Fund. We
have three new interventions designed to increase the supply of cyber skills into the UK
economy: an ambitious schools programme, apprenticeships in three critical sectors, and a
retraining scheme to enable those who show a high potential for cyber security to transition
into the profession. The NCSC’s CyberFirst Programme 2017, launched on 2 February,
offers over 1,250 free student places and up to 250 student bursaries worth £4,000 per
annum on offer to develop a cyber-savvy cohort of students to help protect the UK’s digital
society. It is designed as a focal point that government and industry cyber skills initiatives
can coalesce around; for example, in February 2017 over 8,000 schoolgirls aged 13 – 15,
representing 2,100 school teams, completed the CyberFirst Girls 7-day competition, with
over 200,000 answers submitted.
The United Kingdom advocates a multi-stakeholder approach and a primary NCSC objective
is to bring the public and industry together with our intelligence sector to bolster resilience,
but equally to integrate the private sector as a key actor in protecting and managing cyber
security. We aim to work with business to help understand the risks that they face – the 2015
‘Ten Steps to Cyber Security’, accompanied by ‘Cyber Attacks: Reducing the Impact’ offer
guidance and a framework for businesses to protect themselves against the most common
threats. In addition, the NCSC’s Industry 100 Programme, announced in February 2017,
offers 100 people in industry the chance to join NCSC, to test and challenge government’s
thinking before returning to the private sector to drive change in industry.
The NCSC provides a unified source of advice, guidance and support on cyber security. The
NCSC website (www.ncsc.gov.uk) is available to all organisations with an interest in cyber
4