UK Spy Agency GCHQ Launches Cybersecurity Research Program

The U.K. government, the spy agency GCHQ and various academic and business partners are pulling together for a five-year, £6.5 million program called CyberInvest designed to boost cybersecurity research.

The Telegraph reported that CyberInvest was officially launched at IA15, a conference focused on cybersecurity issues across the country. The program comes on top of £20 million the government has already spent on similar research initiatives over the past four years and in response to the 200 attacks the GCHQ identifies every month. This is double the rate of security threats the intelligence agency saw a year ago.

Besides GCHQ, CyberInvest will also bring the U.K.’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport into the fold, as well as the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Close to 20 private sector firms have also joined, including IBM and BT. Academic researchers told V3 the program opens the door to greater information sharing from GCHQ, providing data on trends in cybersecurity that might help those involved stay one step ahead of cybercriminals and emerging attack vectors.

According to SC Magazine, CyberInvest may be part of an effort by the GCHQ to change its image as an organization based on secrecy to one of greater openness and collaboration. The research program was complemented by the launch of a new website by CESG, the spy agency’s IT security division, which will eventually include thousands of pages of cybersecurity guidance that will be open to anyone.

Of course, this is hardly the first time the U.K. has worked with academia and the private sector to raise the visibility of cybersecurity threats. As a blogger on We Live Security pointed out, CESG and local universities recently co-authored a seven-step paper on password guidance aimed at improving the way businesses and consumers update their login credentials for a wide range of applications and systems.

The real question is whether programs like CyberInvest can move as quickly as the attackers that target major U.K. businesses. Just last month, for instance, a data breach at British ISP TalkTalk caused widespread concerns about the ease with which cybersecurity attacks are carried out. GCHQ and its partners will likely be judged on how well the results of their work will help prevent similar incidents from happening again.

Shane Schick

Writer & Editor

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