UK ‘ is in a better position against cyber attacks’

The UK and its allies are in a better position against cyber attacks than a few years ago, Microsoft's UK head of security has said even as the tech giant warned that a vast majority of businesses in the UK are vulnerable to threats. Kelly, director of security for Microsoft UK, said that the UK is the second most attacked country in Europe, so needs to keep its position intact.

"We're in a better position than five years earlier," he said.

"Look at the amount of work that's gone in across the Government departments, the strategies, the National Cyber Strategy, the ten-year plan, and then the hands-on guidance from NCSC (National Cyber Security Centre) helping small organisations all the way up to enterprises.

"They did multiple interventions around critical national infrastructure, and that's key."

He added: "When you look at the stats it will show that across Europe, Ukraine is the most targeted country, second to that is the UK.

"So it's important that we maintain the posture that we are." It came as a report from Microsoft and Goldsmiths University found that just 13% of the UK'S organisations are "resilient" to cyberattacks.

The fact that so few are prepared for potential bad actors attacking them online could dent the Government's ambition to make the UK a major player in artificial intelligence (AI).

"In the high risk category we had 39 per cent of UK organisations and they shared characteristics like low investment in allocation towards research and development and technology, massive skills gap and deficit...”