British cyber defence capability is to get a boost, following the opening of a new Defence Cyber School at the Defence Academy, say the MoD.

The 2016 National Cyber Security Strategy provided £1.9 billion of investment in cyber, which is being used alongside more conventional land, maritime and air capabilities, to meet these threats head-on.

Earlier we reported that Commander of the UK’s Joint Forces Command, General Sir Chris Deverell warned against Russian cyber activity and claimed that Russia “demonstrated the intent to do us harm”.

General Deverell, who overseas intelligence and UK Special Forces, said:

“What they seek to do is to steal, plant, manipulate, distort and destroy our information. That’s what they seek to do and it’s part of their doctrine. Every single system we have in our lives is in some way controlled by systems that have ones and noughts in them. If you can get them then you can affect us.

That would stretch to power, it would stretch to traffic systems, it would stretch to air traffic control systems, it would stretch to air conditioning systems, it would stretch to just about anything you can imagine. In doing that it could have very, very serious consequences for a lot of people in this country.”

Now, building on current capabilities; which include the Global Operations and Security Control Centre at MOD Corsham; and the MOD Computer Emergency Response Team (MOD-CERT); Rapid Response Teams will be established from April say the MoD.

Teams of specialist Incident Responders will be available to deploy to locations around the UK and overseas, to tackle malicious cyber activity.

Armed Forces’ Minister Mark Lancaster, who opened the school, said:

“Cyber threats to the UK are constantly evolving and we take them very seriously. That’s why the Defence Cyber School is so important. It’s a state-of-the-art centre of excellence that will train more personnel across Defence and wider government in dealing with emerging threats.”

Commander Joint Forces Command, General Sir Chris Deverell, said:

“Defence has a number of very highly-trained military personnel on hand to deal with emerging and complex cyber threats. We are reinforcing these capabilities with the creation of Rapid Response Teams. Our threat-hunters give us the ability to identify, isolate and respond to these threats, whenever and wherever they might arise.”

The MoD said:

“The UK has advanced counter-cyber capabilities which can protect national interests from harm caused by adversaries. Furthermore, offensive cyber can be used to deal with serious threats to the UK.”