Keeping the UK safe from cyber-attacks is now as important as fighting terrorism, the head of the intelligence monitoring service GCHQ has said.
Jeremy Fleming said increased funding for GCHQ was being spent on making it a “cyber-organisation” as much as an intelligence and counter-terrorism one.
It comes after the NHS and parliament suffered cyber-attacks this year.
Mr Fleming said there had been nearly 600 “significant” cyber-attacks needing a national response in the last year.
‘Deeply challenging’
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, the ex-deputy director of MI5, who became GCHQ director in March, said the UK’s adversaries were “quick to spot new ways of doing us harm”.
“We see that in the way terrorists are constantly changing their weapons, or states are using their full range of tools to steal secrets, gain influence and attack our economy”.
But he said until the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) was set up last year, GCHQ’s work on cyber-security “too often felt like the poor relation”.
Source: BBC News