Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to (a) enhance cybersecurity and (b) protect personal data.

Being cyber secure and protecting personal data underpins everything we do in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). In accordance with the Government Cyber Security Strategy we are working to ensure that our critical functions will be significantly hardened to cyber attack by 2025, with all government organisations across the whole public sector being resilient to known vulnerabilities and attack methods no later than 2030.

DCMS has in 2022 established a new Cyber Security Group (DCMS-Cyber), a function comprising a diverse range of security and digital specialists. These specialists are working together to deliver a unified, coordinated cyber security capability.

DCMS in 2023 developed a cyber security strategy, which is envisioned to deliver enhanced cyber security services that safeguard and manage continued cyber security threats.

DCMS-Cyber has 5 strategic objectives, which are to:

• Understand and articulate the cyber threat.

• Identify, respond to and mitigate these threats.

• Identify, manage and assure cyber risks.

• Drive cyber security best-practice.

• Build secure by design building on cross-government standards and principles.

DCMS-Cyber is working as part of the wider cross-government security community, to deliver a suite of proactive and intelligence-led cyber security programs.

Additionally, DCMS follows guidance issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office on the correct and safe handling of personal data, employing such measures as having DCMS policies, guidance and training in place.