Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that UK businesses are protected from cyber-crime.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is playing a key role in the delivery of the National Cyber Security Strategy, a five-year programme to transform the UK’s approach to cyber security, backed up with £860m of investment.

BIS leads on the “making it safer to do business in cyber space” objective and has delivered a range of measures to help protect UK business from cyber crime, including:

· publishing a range of good practice cyber security guidance aimed at large and small businesses;

· delivering the ‘Cyber Streetwise’ campaign with the Home Office to help businesses and consumers protect themselves against online crime;

· launching the industry approved “Cyber Essentials” scheme which enables businesses to implement a good basic level of cyber hygiene against cyber threats;

· making over £1m of cyber security innovation vouchers available to UK SMEs to help them improve their cyber security, and

· Support for industry initiatives such as Nominet’s ‘Cyber Assist’ pilot service for small and medium-sized enterprises experiencing cyber attacks.

BIS also works with other Government departments and the security and intelligence agencies to deliver further measures to help protect UK business from cyber crime, including:

· Creating a national Computer Emergency Response Team, CERT UK, which works closely with industry, Government and academia to enhance UK cyber resilience. It provides support to Critical National Infrastructure companies to handle cyber security incidents.

· Setting up the Cyber Security Information Sharing Partnership (CISP), part of CERT UK, which enables companies to share information and intelligence on cyber security threats;

· The creation of a Government approved list of Cyber Incident ‘Clean Up’ companies which can help companies respond effectively to incidents and get them up and running as soon as possible.