UK facing more than 10 cyber attacks per week

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has defended the nation from an average of more than 10 attacks per week during its first two proper years in operation.

The centre’s second annual report shows that the centre has provided frontline security support for 1167 incidents since it became fully operational in 2016, including 557 in the past 12 months.

NCSC provides advice and support for the public sector and providers of critical infrastructure. The majority of attacks responded to by the centre were carried out by hostile nation states.

Meanwhile, the NCSC’s Active Cyber Defence initiative removed 138,398 phishing sites hosted in the UK during the 12 months ending in August and a further 14,116 global sites spoofing the UK government.

This helped reduce the UK’s share of visible global phishing attacks by more than half; from 5.3% to 2.4%.

The initiative also blocked an average of 10,975 unique malicious domains per month and identified 2372 critical website vulnerabilities that have now been fixed.

“I’m extremely proud that the NCSC is strengthening the UK’s defences against those who seek to harm us online,” NCSC Chief Executive Ciaran Martin said.

“We are calling out unacceptable behaviour by hostile states and giving our businesses the specific information they need to defend themselves. We are improving our critical systems. We are helping to make using the internet automatically safer.

Image credit: ©iStockphoto.com

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