Cybersecurity: Encryption
Debate between Earl of Erroll and Baroness Shields
Baroness Shields
I thank the noble Lord for the question. It is beyond my area of expertise and knowledge at this stage, but I will find out that information and come back to him.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
My Lords, I have noticed that when my wife gets communications from local authorities, they start quite correctly with the words “official-sensitive”, which is a security classification for documents to encrypt them. However, they are using a particularly complicated method of doing it. Will the Minister please urge the Government—where they, very sensibly, are going to start sending out sensitive communications in this way—to look at using the easier and simpler forms of encryption that exist?
Baroness Shields
The noble Earl raises a very important point. Fortunately, encryption technology is moving on to the point at which even military-grade encryption is available in easy format. We will look into that and make those recommendations in the guidelines.