WIREDGOV

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has defended the UK against more than 600 cyber attacks in the past year – bringing the total number to almost 1,800, new figures show.

The figures are contained in the NCSC’s third Annual Review, which also sets out the various ways the organisation has been protecting the public. This includes a pioneering operation to stop hundreds of thousands of people losing money to credit card fraud.

Over the period of the review the NCSC has dealt with 658 incidents, which brings the total number to almost 1,800 since the Centre’s formation in 2016.  A significant number of incidents continue to come from hostile nation states.

In the most wide-ranging review yet produced by the NCSC, which is a part of GCHQ, significant disclosures include:

• The pioneering Operation Haulster, which automatically flagged fraudulent intention against more than one million stolen credit cards, as a result protecting hundreds of thousands of people from financial loss
• A machine to improve the efficiency of information sharing around threats to the UK – speeding up the process from a matter of hours to just seconds - new Indicator of Compromise (IoC) machine.
• A breakdown for the first time of the sectors which are given the most support from the NCSC’s Incident Management team, with government heading the list, followed by academia, IT, managed service providers and – in joint fifth – health and transport

Elsewhere in the review, the key role the NCSC plays in protecting the democratic process is highlighted as well as the success of the Active Cyber Defence (ACD) Programme.  ACD is the NCSC’s world-leading, bold, interventionist approach that stops millions of cyber attacks from ever happening. 

(See also: Active Cyber Defence (ACD) – NCSC )

ACD features a number of pioneering programmes, such as the Takedown Service, which finds malicious sites and sends notifications to the host to get them removed. Thanks to this service, 98% of phishing URLs discovered to be malicious were taken down, a total of 177,335 phishing URLs.  Of those, 62.4% were removed in the first hour.

There are also examples in the review of how the NCSC is helping defend individuals and families from the cyber threat, including via Operation Haulster.