NCSC Annual Review 2022

Weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine the NCSC updated its guidance and alerted UK Government, businesses, organisations and citizens about the actions to take in the event of a heightened cyber threat. This included fundamental protections such as patching, backups, incident planning and systems monitoring.

As the attack grew closer the NCSC worked closely with the FCDO to develop a strategy to support the Government of Ukraine, drawing on capabilities and its expertise and that of industry partners to bolster their defences. These efforts were shown to have been critical in protecting the Ukrainians against Russian cyber attacks, and raising the country’s general cyber resilience.

Closer to home, Sir Jeremy Fleming and Lindy Cameron led roundtables with CEOs of domestic energy, utilities, food, communications, transport and other essential service providers to brief them on the risks and mitigations to help minimise impact should Russian cyber aggression reach or impact the UK.

As the conflict took hold, the NCSC increased its engagement across sectors and institutions. This included several Digital Loft briefings which reached thousands of businesses and organisations.

As well as direct engagement, further public announcements and advice on strengthening defences were made throughout the early stages of the invasion, with NCSC highlighting the potential for burnout among cyber defenders and setting out steps that organisations could take to reduce this risk.

This activity was complemented by four audience-led communication campaigns running in the first two months of the conflict which saw NCSC advice and guidance reaching millions of citizens and small businesses through radio, social media and partnership channels, leading to significant increases in downloads of cyber resilience resources from the NCSC website.

During this period there was a 41% increase in unique visits to ncsc.gov.uk, peaking on 24 February, which saw visits 147% above the average daily rate. Visits to critical guidance such as the Small Business Guide, and advisories such as ‘Actions to take when the cyber threat is heightened’, saw increases of up to 900%.