Official reveals £650m cyber security spending plans

Official reveals £650m cyber security spending plans

Office of Cyber Security and Information Assurance deputy says money will be shared by GCHQ, government departments and the police

The government will spend 65% of the £650m it has earmarked for cyber security on capabilities, while a further 20% will be spent on critical cyber infrastructure, according to Ian McGhie, deputy director of the Office of Cyber Security and Information Assurance (Ocsia).

The rest of the £650m will be spent on cyber crime specifics (9%) and education (1%), as well as 5% in reserve, said McGhie in an interview with ZDNet UK .

The government first announced plans to spend more on cyber security in October 2010 as part of its Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR).

McGhie said that the sum will go towards the National Cyber Security Programme, which aims to enhance security against cyber threats across government and the private sector.

Ocsia sits within the Cabinet Office and aims to support the security minister, Baroness Neville-Jones, and the National Security Council in determining priorities in relation to securing cyberspace. The council was set up by prime minister David Cameron in May 2010 as part of the government's plan to enhance the security of UK computer networks.

McGhie also disclosed that the money will be used to enhance links with the private sector. "We've been talking to defence companies and ISPs, but we're not just concerned with one area of the private sector," he said. "We hope more companies will get involved, and I personally would like to see more industry bodies involved, as they tend to have clout."

He told ZDNet that the government was trying to "sweat the £650m as much as possible" and added that it was important to remember that the sum was being delivered against "a background of a lot of cuts".

In October 2010 Iain Lobban, director of GCHQ, said that 80% of the government's cyber security vulnerabilities could be solved through good information assurance. He explained that if government departments observed basic network security disciplines like "keeping patches up to date" combined with the necessary attention to personnel security, their online networks would be much safer.