Tougher defences keep Brits safe online

Tuesday, February 13, 2018 - 09:39 by Graham Miller

Since its launch a little over a year ago, the National Cyber Security Centre has helped to reduce cybercriminal activity and prevent UK residents from falling victim to cybercrime, according to GCHQ.

The Register reports that active efforts to bring the fight to hackers and scammers are proving successful, keeping people more secure and allowing them to carry out safe shopping online without fear of having private data stolen.

This is all part of Active Cyber Defence strategy deployed by the centre in 2016 in order to combat the highest volume instances of cybercriminal activity, as opposed to focusing resources on hacks which target specific businesses or individuals.

Project spokesperson, Dr Ian Levy, said that this pro-active method of dealing with cybercrime was having a demonstrable impact, with over 120,000 different scam sites taken out of action already.

This means that consumers are less likely to encounter infected pages when attempting to enjoy safe shopping online.

Most of the sites being dealt with by security experts are hosted on British soil, which makes them easier to identify and take offline to reduce attack volumes.

Fraudulent email campaigns have also come under scrutiny, with a sizable reduction in the UK’s contribution to global phishing campaigns recorded as a result.

From here on in, the National Cyber Security Centre is going to continue working on new ways to prevent criminal groups from exploiting Brits in the digital realm. It eventually hopes to make distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks harder to pull off, which will ease disruption online.

The organisation’s representatives admit that there is still a long way to go to optimise the country’s ability to undermine cybercrime, but confirmed that progress was being made and safety was increasing as a result of proactive defences.