Spy chiefs are planning national firewall to protect every home
He’s also the man at the head of the UK’s brand new National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), due to open next month.
The prime aim of what is being dubbed as the “Great British Firewall” is to protect government sites and industries regarded as central to national security but it would also widen the scope to include major private companies.
Martin noted a further cybercrime initiative which is looking at tackling commodity attacks by sending automated takedown requests to hosting providers and registrars.
“Last year we detected twice as many national security-level cyber incidents – 200 per month – than we did the year before”, he added. “The majority of successful cyberattacks are not sophisticated”, he said. “And they are doing a lot of damage”. They’re damaging our major institutions.
If such attacks are not countered, the cost to United Kingdom businesses could be great.
Grand new plans are being drawn up by British spy chiefs to create a “Great British Firewall” to block malicious websites countrywide and combat serious cyber attacks threatening national security. Former CIA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden, published documents in 2013 that highlighted the far-reaching surveillance undertaken by GCHQ.
It’s possible that major companies could see some kickback from customers concerned over their privacy but these customers will be given the ability to opt out of taking part in the firewall.
Before they decide whether or not they’d wish to fall into GCHQ’s remit of protection these companies will no doubt have to weigh up the risk of the government agency being able to access their private details against the threat of malicious hackers. Consumers must have a choice. So addressing privacy concerns and citizen choice is hardwired into our programme.
“Even if we trust ISPs and governments not to abuse their extending powers of censorship, we ought to be anxious that GCHQ is proposing at least one security measure which undermines global efforts to improve the integrity of the internet and thereby its security”, he wrote.
The NCSC’s brief will be to better coordinate Britain’s cyber defenses, and Martin said the proposed “flagship” project of extending government defenses to private internet providers would scale up DNS (domain name system) filtering, a means of screening out malicious websites.
The proposal surrounds scaling up DNS filtering to provide automated defences at scale, effectively blocking ISP customers from coming into contact with known malware and bad IP addresses.