CYBER WARFARE

The Ministry of Defence in Britain fends off thousands of cyber-attacks every day while its military systems log and report more than a million suspicious incidents on a daily basis.

Increasingly, the UK’s critical infrastructure has become dependent on digital and electronic communication. Cyber-warfare is now such a pressing national security issue that, within the next few years, seems certain to become the UK’s top security priority. This week, the U.S. defence secretary, Ash Carter, warned that a cyber-intrusion in a NATO state’s network would be costly and could trigger a collective response that extends beyond cyberspace. Earlier this year former NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen claimed cyber security had become part and parcel of collective security and urged allies to heighten their defences against unconventional warfare.

The head of the British armed forces’ cyber-defence programme, Brigadier Alan Hill, has said that his unit picks up as many as a million suspicious cyber incidents a day on its networks, which he says if left unmanaged could lead to a breach, allowing for a major cyber-attack.

Hill claims that as many as ‘hundreds if not thousands’ of these suspicious occurrences are attempts of serious cyber-attacks on Britain’s Ministry of Defence.

Hill says that he deals with a lot of attacks every day of a varying nature. He insists that what the attackers are after has not changed, but it is the intensity and complexity of the attacks that has. He also lays bare that the threats are evolving almost daily and that it is imperative that defence systems stay ahead of these threats.

Hill heads the Ministry of Defence’s Information Systems and Services which is the highly classified branch of the armed forces, responsible for the state’s cyber defence capabilities.

Despite British Prime Minister David Cameron being expected to heavily cut defence spending, Hill believes that cyber security will continue to be well financed as the nature of such threats demand consistently cutting edge technology and solutions.

He said: ‘More agile procurement is the only way we are going to stay ahead of the game because the tech is changing so fast. We are very sophisticated, but there is no complacency allowed… Traditionally, we defined what we wanted and then over 10 years we had it built. That is great for tanks and ships and aircraft but it’s no good in IT.’

He said he expected ‘continued investment at scale’ in the next defence security review, despite possible cuts elsewhere.

A large part of why the Ministry of Defence is a target for cyber-attacks is because the UK has several stakes within multiple international organisations, and because of its global influence.

Not all cyber-attacks will be categorised as cyber-espionage but the UK and the Ministry of Defence will certainly be a target for such high-end attacks. The UK is a high-profile NATO member and has military deployments and secondments in various conflict hot spots around the world. Lots of things make the UK a desirable espionage target and some of them make the Ministry of Defence a target too.