Bob Ainsworth – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Bob Ainsworth on 2014-04-29.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what recent discussions (a) he and (b) Ministers in his Department have had with their NATO counterparts on the establishment of a NATO-wide cyber capability.

Dr Andrew Murrison

NATO-wide Cyber Defence is provided by NATO’s Computer Incident Response Capability (NCIRC) which delivers centralised protection for many NATO sites. The NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) has recently undertaken a major upgrade of NCIRC’s capability with enhancements delivered in monitoring of core networks on NATO sites on a 24/7 basis. NCIA will continue to manage the upgrade of NCIRC’s capability to best protect NATO owned systems from the evolving threat.

Progress enhancing the NATO Cyber Defence was most recently discussed at Ministerial level, at the February NATO Defence Ministerial and will be discussed again at the June Defence Ministerial as the Alliance prepares for the WALES Summit in September. The UK continues to pay a central role in moving this issue forward across a whole range of activities such as incentivising national cyber defence capability development to develop Alliance-wide cyber defence capability, information sharing and exchanging best practice.