Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the number of cyber attacks there have been in each of the last three years on UK companies by a hostile state; and what is their policy to prevent such attacks.

Our new National Cyber Strategy, launched in December 2021, sets out how we will ensure that the UK continues to be a leading, responsible and democratic cyber power, able to protect and promote our interests in the rapidly evolving online world. This includes our approach to making the UK more resilient to cyber attacks and countering cyber threats. It is supported by £2.6 billion of investment over three years.

Over the past three years, the National Cyber Security Centre has dealt with a total of 2158 significant cyber incidents affecting people and organisations across the UK: 658 in 2019, 723 in 2020 and 777 in 2021. The 2021 Cyber Security Breaches Survey shows that 39% of businesses identified a cyber attack in the last 12 months, 46% in 2020 and 32% in 2019. We are not in a position to be able to identify all cyber attacks against UK companies or attribute responsibility for every attack.

The UK will do what is necessary to protect ourselves through our world leading capability in this area. We are vigilant to cyber threats, wherever they come from, and ready to defend against them. We are continuing to work to make the UK more resilient to cyber threats and raise the cost for those who would do us harm.