Inside the UK Government's Cyber Security & Resilience Bill
The UK’s digital economy is vital to the nation’s success, underpinning technology and innovation, key infrastructure, businesses and essential public services.
But as a result of its importance, the technologies driving growth across these sectors are also increasingly vulnerable to attacks by cyber criminals.
In particular, hospitals, universities, local authorities and key institutions face a growing and complex range of threats. Recent cyber attacks affecting the UK Ministry of Defence and the National Health Service (NHS) demonstrated the potential severity of the attacks.
In September 2024, the UK Government announced the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill to address these challenges. It is designed to protect essential digital services, update critical infrastructure and security frameworks, and make supply chains and energy services more secure.
Building on this, the government has now set out the scope and ambition of the bill for the first time, detailing how it will boost the protection of critical national services including IT providers and introduce new measures to safeguard data centres.