Six ways the UK can lead as a global cyber power

The UK is already making some good progress with the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, introduced in late 2025. It represents a more assertive, mandatory regulatory approach across public and private sectors. Its scope is much broader than its predecessor, bringing managed service providers, data centres and organisations operating high‑impact connected technologies into oversight. Regulators can also designate suppliers as ‘critical’, reflecting the reality that cyber risk increasingly sits within supply chains.

The UK is also leading by example through the Government Cyber Action Plan, backed by £210 million of investment, which aims to take a more coordinated and centralised approach to cyber security by strengthening the government’s own incident response and embedding secure-by-design principles across the public sector supply chain. That’s alongside a range of other public funding that has already been committed to improving cyber resilience and modernising legacy networks.

Bad actors are continuously reinventing their craft. Which means that the good actors must also continue to innovate. We continue to see a strong pipeline of startups, SMEs and university spin offs – particularly in areas related to critical national infrastructure protection. And, encouragingly, we are seeing robust clusters of cyber capabilities build regionally in places like Manchester, Leeds and Bristol.

Cyber security has moved decisively from a technical concern to a strategic business issue with the Government and NCSC now engaging much more closely with senior business leaders and reinforcing expectations of board ownership. High performing organisations we support are responding by strengthening governance, giving CISOs direct access to the board and embedding cyber risk into broader decision-making processes and frameworks.

Cyber security isn’t just about how well you defend against threats. It’s also about how effectively you operationally respond to and recover from cyber incidents. We are seeing the strongest organisations assume a ‘breach first’ mindset, regularly rehearsing incidents and building the institutional and capability muscle memory needed to make effective decisions under pressure in the moment. That, in turn, is raising the collective resilience of the UK economy.

The UK is increasingly taking a more coordinated public and private sector approach to addressing the skills gap. Public and private sectors are working together to expand cyber education and career pathways, strengthen apprenticeships and conversion programmes and invest in the development of a dedicated cyber profession across both sectors. The focus is shifting from simply producing more specialists to building a sustainable, diverse skills pipeline that supports our long-term national resilience.