Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps the Government is taking to (a) protect critical national infrastructure, business and consumers from the vulnerabilities to hackers in mobile signalling networks SS7 and Diameter and (b) mitigate against the risk of such attacks.

It was announced in 2016 as part of the National Cyber Security Strategy that SS7 and Diameter protocols used within mobile networks would be tackled within the National Cyber Security Center’s (NCSC) published Active Cyber Defence programme. The NCSC continues to work closely with mobile operators to reduce the vulnerability of UK networks. In addition, the NCSC works with other critical sectors to provide guidance on how to mitigate the risks of such attacks.