Cybercrime: International Cooperation

(asked on 18th October 2021) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking with her international counterparts to strengthen the UK's national resilience against (a) ransomware and (b) wider cyber crime.


Answered by
Damian Hinds Portrait
Damian Hinds
Minister of State (Education)
This question was answered on 25th October 2021

The Government’s priority, working alongside law enforcement and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), is to do all we can to mitigate any harm to the UK from ransomware and other cyber crimes.

We co-ordinate closely with a wide range of international partners, from our operational relationships with foreign law enforcement and intelligence agencies through to the use of our diplomatic network to build global resilience. We share our analysis of the threat and our criminal justice expertise to increase the capabilities and commitment of countries around the world to respond and deter malicious cyber activity. We have a global network of cyber attachés who work with international partners to raise awareness and build capacity to defend against cyberattacks, including coordinating on our approaches to attributing malicious cyber activity.

Our commitment to strengthening international action on cyber crime was demonstrated at the G7 summit in June; G7 partners committed to work together to urgently address the escalating shared threats from cyber criminal networks. We continue to engage with G7 partners on this. Furthermore, the UK recently met with over 30 international partners to discuss the growing threat of ransomware, focusing on a range of options to better coordinate our activity to improve the resilience of our networks and systems.

More widely, the Government strongly supports the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime as the leading international treaty on cybercrime, and we welcome the work of the Council of Europe to develop the Second Additional Protocol to the Convention, to ensure that the Convention remains effective in the face of changing threats in cyberspace, and that it continues to provide an effective legal basis for international cooperation to tackle these threats. In addition, the UK will play an active role in the development of the proposed UN treaty on cybercrime.

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