The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has confirmed that it dealt with 658 incidents in the past year, of which a significant number were “from hostile nation states.” As the NCSC launched its third annual review, in the same month as it marks three years in operation, the NCSC disclosed that government was the sector that received the most support from the NCSC’s Incident Management team, followed by academia, IT, managed service providers and, in joint fifth, health and transport. Speaking at the report launch at the NCSC headquarters in London, chief executive Ciaran Martin said that whatever successes it had enjoyed were based on “strong clinical sponsorship” and it was “privileged to have strong political sponsorship, strong strategy, funding and autonomy to get on with the job.” He added that whilst some attackers “are still doing the same things over and over again and too often getting though,” there are things we and organizational leaders can do to get ahead of the problem, and these include “practical and sensible measures like two-factor authentication, strong passwords, backups and for businesses to scan for vulnerabilities.” Praising the “excellence” of the NCSC staff and “quality of partnerships” as being “essential to everything we do,” Martin said the role of the NCSC was not just about dealing with threats, but also about its international and domestic outreach to partners and businesses.

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