Science Secretary Peter Kyle once said that British shrinkage further increases its exposure to cyber risks and future pandemics. In the recent past, Kyle has stressed on the nation’s ‘desperate exposure’ to these threats; he blamed severe cuts on public spending launched by earlier Conservative governments for the same. Such measures, according to Kyle, have dealt body blows to the NHS and other core services rendering Britain vulnerable to cyber and health emergencies.
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) recently stated the ‘scale, pace and complexity’ of cyber threats targeting CNI including; water, power and hospitals is rising. The increased ransomware attacks as well as country-aligned hackers targeting the UK has made the government to focus on a new Cyber Security and Resilience (CS&R) bill. The intent behind this bill is to strengthen the nation against growing threats in the cyberspace domain, which is recently developing as a major issue.
Besides cybersecurity, the British authorities’ readiness for future epidemics is also in doubt. The first report of the Inquiry into the Covid crisis in the UK submitted on 1 June and published ten days later exposed “fatal strategic flaws” in British handling of the pandemic preparatory to its engaging in arms development and suggesting serious enhancements to the plans for coming crises. As these authors have put it and as other health professionals in Britain also agree, the Health Service is still woefully inadequate to handle another calamity that may befall the UK.
The problem is that as the government is starting to pay attention to these critical problems, the importance of increasing national readiness and security becomes more evident where cyber protection and health take a leading position.