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NCSC and ICO Sign Agreement to Partner on Cyber Threat Intelligence
The UK’s data protection watchdog and national security agency agree to cooperate closely on the nation’s cybersecurity posture.
The agreement came in the form of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which both the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) formally signed.
As part of the agreement, the ICO has committed to sharing cyber-incident information with the NCSC on an anonymised and aggregate basis. However, the MoU said the ICO will also share “incident specific details where the matter is of national significance.”
The MoU also confirms that the NCSC will never pass information shared in confidence with it to the ICO without consent from that organisation.
“We already work closely with the NCSC to offer the right tools, advice and support to businesses and organisations on how to improve their cybersecurity and stay secure,” said information commissioner John Edwards.
“This Memorandum of Understanding reaffirms our commitment to improve the UK’s cyber-resilience so people’s information is kept safe online from cyber attacks.”
As part of the new agreement, the ICO will also advise companies to use the NCSC as their main contact for risk mitigation, making regulatory matters a secondary concern.
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This new MoU with the Information Commissioner builds on our existing relationship and will boost the UK’s digital security,” said NCSC CEO Lindy Cameron.
“It provides us with a platform and mechanism to improve cybersecurity standards across the board while respecting each other’s remits.”
The agreement between the ICO and NCSC represents a further step towards the UK becoming a safer place for organisations to operate in an increasingly digitised world.
In the UK alone, over 32% of businesses and 24% of charities recalled breaches or attacks on their systems in the last 12 months. This number jumps to 59% for medium-sized organisations, and to 69% for larger organisations, according to the UK Government.
