UK’s Director of GCHQ Urges Greater Awareness of Cyber Threats

In a move designed to bring wider public attention to cyber security, the head of one of the UK’s shadowy intelligence agencies, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Iain Lobban, has made a first-ever public address in which he described how GCHQ fits within the broader national security picture in the UK. (By way of an historical note, GCHQ is the successor agency to the band of World War II cryptographers who broke the Ultra codes used by the German-designed Enigma machines). Elaborating on how the GCHQ’s mission is two-fold, intelligence and information assurance, Lobban confirmed a topic from a previous issue of E-TIPS® in a Canadian context: namely that cyber techniques are indeed being used by one nation against another in order to bring economic or political pressure to bear. He also confirmed that the UK is observing theft of intellectual property on a “massive scale”, and that cyberspace has lowered the bar for entry into the espionage game, allowing non-government criminal actors into the fray. Anyone interested in the topic of cyber security will want to read Iain Lobban’s speech in full (follow this link for the full text). Summary by: Cindy Vergara