July 29, 2019

The Government has announced that some major tech businesses, such as Google and Microsoft, are expected to contribute up to £117 million into a new “Digital Security by Design” project to develop technologies to combat cyber attacks. This private industry investment will be combined with £70 million government investment through its modern Industrial Strategy. The new technologies will range from a new and secure hardware prototype that can cope with cyber attacks, to software protected from new vulnerabilities appearing online, each to ensure that “every UK organisation and consumer online is as secure and resilient to cyber threats as possible”.

The Government says that with cyber threats constantly evolving, the best defence in the future is seen as developing innovative solutions that can work independently and protect against threats even during attacks.

According to Government statistics, more than 30% of businesses have experienced a cyber-security breach or attack in the last 12 months. Businesses are having to spend increasing amounts on cyber security, up to 20 to 40% of their IT spend in some cases. As more and more systems are connected, whether in the home or businesses, the Government says that there is a need for security that is secure by design.

The Government says that this expected joint investment will create projects to develop new solutions to cyber security over the next five years, with the aim of applying the findings in real-world markets through dedicated demo projects led by business. For example, these demo projects could include testing the new technology in the health sector to ensure a higher level of protection for patient data, or in consumer markets to ensure consumers’ personal data is fully protected as far as possible.

Ann Johnson, Corporate Vice President, Cybersecurity Solutions Group at Microsoft, said: “At Microsoft, we embrace our responsibility to help empower organisations on their digital transformation journey to unlock the security and compliance capabilities of the intelligent cloud and next generation AI. We support the vision behind the Digital Security by Design Initiative that helps bring digital security by design into the central hardware of tomorrows computers and have committed financial resources to collaborate across these exciting new proposed activities.”

Ben Laurie, Head of Security and Transparency at Google, said: “At Google we place a high priority on the security of data and believe that the proposed Digital Security by Design initiative is vital to bridge the gap between the realities of the hardware development cycle and those of commercial software companies. We need proven hardware architectural changes that permit the secure and efficient separation of data so we can provide the user control of data in distributed systems, a problem thought otherwise impractical to address. We will commit significant resources to this program, the results of which will be open source and available to the whole industry.”

The Government says that developing innovative solutions to cyber security will help “put the UK at the forefront of the AI and data revolution, in support of the [G]overnment’s AI and Data Grand Challenge”.

Details on the upcoming rounds of funding for this Digital Security by Design challenge, which will likely bring together academics, research institutions, start-ups, SMEs and large businesses, will be announced later this year. To read the Government’s press release in full, click here.