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UK Foreign Minister Dominic Raab pledged £22 million to support cyber security initiatives across Africa and the Indo-Pacific to mitigate the threats posed by state and non-state actors.
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The UK has pledged £22 million to support cyber security capacity building across a number of developing nations in Africa and the Indo-Pacific, in order to mitigate the risk of infiltration from malicious state and non-state actors.
In a speech to the National Cyber Security Centre’s CYBERUK conference, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab addressed the growing threat posed by cyber criminals not only to regular internet users, but to also to governments.
“Elections are also a prime target,” the Foreign Secretary said.
“Russian actors tried to interfere in the 2019 general election … spreading lies online, taking aim squarely at British democracy.
“In 2017 the Russian military mounted the NotPetya cyber attack on Ukraine, now that was originally intended to hit the country’s banks, its government, and its energy companies. But the impact spread rapidly … from New Jersey to New Zealand.”
In order to undertake this program, the UK government and INTERPOL will establish a cyber security base to undertake cyber security support services to Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Rwanda to mitigate the threat of malicious cyber actors. The UK is further expected to become a Dialogue Partner to ASEAN later in 2021.
The UK expects to offer further support to the nations by developing their national response framework and cyber security teams, and provide their future workforces additional Chevening scholarships.
[Related: Cyber attack shuts down largest oil pipeline in US, state of emergency declared]
