Labour should focus on talent to improve UK’s cyber posture

Critically, in today’s world, cyber security is a fundamental part of statecraft and the responsibility of the government. That being to provide safety and security for its citizens, residents, immigrants, as well as businesses and charities, schools and hospitals.

Cyber security is a clear and critical part of this responsibility that we must consider beyond the boundaries of politics.

A key component of implementing a robust cyber security strategy for the UK government is recruiting and maintaining technical talent in key roles.

We saw the advent of the Government Digital Service (GDS) in 2011 as a huge landmark shift in how the government delivered services to the public.

This sparked a global revolution of sorts, with massive upheaval and change observed as governments around the world started modelling or taking inspiration from the UK’s design.

I was at the White House in one of the first cohorts of the agency inspired by GDS, the US Digital Service, created under president Obama.

I remember a meeting in which the champion of GDS, Sir Francis Maude, a minister in David Cameron’s Conservative-led coalition government, spoke eloquently to a room full of technical leaders in engineering, design, and product management, each one on leave from or recently having departed big tech companies from Silicon Valley.

Maude’s message was simple: a blueprint for success creating lasting digital transformation in government. It was apolitical, just good governance, good government.

One of the key tenets of the success of GDS, UDSD, and the host of other organisations across the globe that followed, in Canada and Europe, Oceania and beyond, was the ability to hire and empower great people.

Bringing technical talent into government was absolutely essential to the success of this organisation and more broadly for the US civil service. This is absolutely the case again here in the UK.

There are a range of growing cyber security threats to contend with. Spyware vendors are able to sell nation-state-level weapons-grade cyber capabilities for relatively modest sums and that market is growing; the scourge of ransomware and financial fraud has brought powerful companies to their knees whilst preying on some of society’s most vulnerable, in hospitals.

Attacks on these institutions, no matter the attacker, are attacks on our democratic way of life and endanger modern society.

But to protect ourselves, we need investment in the smart and capable people in civil service to do the hard work of tracking and disrupting these criminal actors.

I’d hope to see investment in retention bonuses for existing talented staff and incentives that bring in new faces to help join this effort.

Elliott Wilkes is CTO at Advanced Cyber Defence Systems. A seasoned digital transformation leader and product manager, Wilkes has over a decade of experience working with both the American and British governments, most recently as a cyber security consultant to the Civil Service.