The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) have announced Cyber Shield – an initiative to develop a national, sovereign defence capability using frontier AI to reduce cyber risk.
The initiative calls on academia, Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) organisations, frontier labs, and the cyber defence sector to partner with the NCSC’s initiative in response to the rise of AI-enabled cyber threats.
A partnership model
The Cyber Shield vision is to develop agentic AI cyber defence capabilities for the UK. From the NCSC’s perspective these capabilities would deploy ‘red’ and ‘blue’ agents to:
- Identify vulnerabilities and threats at machine speed, before progressing towards automated remediation
- Generate and share insight whilst detecting and containing breaches
- Work under the control and authority of their owners across government and non-government institutions
- Collaborate seamlessly across organisational boundaries
- Contribute to improving the national security of the UK
To deliver on this vision the NCSC has highlighted certain functions will be required and will partner with government and critical sectors to test and deploy capabilities in this context. The aim is to transition to commercially scalable solutions that provide a case study on how to deliver cyber defence in the AI era.
Security recommendations
NCSC also outlines its recommendations to ensure critical systems are well defended including:
- Rapid patching of vulnerabilities
- Reducing reliance on legacy systems
- Adopting secure-by-design technologies
- Using AI in cyber-defence including to identify vulnerabilities, detect and contain incidents, and working to address challenges of automating mitigation steps
Next steps
The NCSC and DSIT are working together to establish effective pathways for partners to come together and contribute and invite those interested to contact the NCSC at cybershield@ncsc.gov.uk.
For further information, please contact:
Rory Coutts, Bird & Bird
rory.coutts@twobirds.com
