3rd Party Risk Management , Business Continuity Management / Disaster Recovery , Critical Infrastructure Security

UK Cyber Security Strategy: Challenges and Opportunities

The newly published U.K. Cyber Security Strategy demonstrates "the depth of ambition that the U.K. has got for the cyber sector," says Dan Patefield, program head of cyber and national security at techUK.

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Patefield says there are two key areas in which this strategy has the opportunity to improve upon the last one, which was released in 2016. The first is in identifying key performance indicators, or KPIs, and measuring success effectively. "Sometimes these big lofty ambitions like maintaining the U.K. as a lead-in and responsible cyber power, are quite hard to gauge. So in five years, how will we judge this across our locations?"

The second is in how the strategy relates to other strategies across government. "Cyber needs to become a more prominent element of other key strategies across government departments, which then ensures key collaboration, not just amongst government, but amongst wider industry, academia and other stakeholders," he says.

In a video interview with Information Security Media Group, Patefield discusses:

• Highlights from the new U.K. Cyber Security Strategy;
• Hopes and expectations for the strategy;
• The necessity to ensure key collaboration, among government, academia and the wider industry.

Patefield leads the techUK Cyber Security Program. He is responsible for managing techUK's work across the cybersecurity ecosystem, bringing industry together with key stakeholders across the public and private sectors. He joined techUK in August 2017 as a program manager working across the cyber and defense programs.