Insights ¦ Annual Review 2025

Key Take Aways

1. Cyber security is increasingly a boardroom issue, vital for organisational resilience and long-term success.
2. The escalation in cyber incidents, including highly significant breaches, underscores the importance of proactive risk management.
3. Collaboration across government, industry, academia, and international partners remains essential to counter evolving threats.
4. Building cyber resilience requires both scale and strategic focus, including investment in foundational controls like Cyber Essentials and advanced detection tools.
5. Organisational culture, leadership engagement, and behavioural science are critical to fostering proactive cyber practices and reducing costly inaction.
6. Preparedness, threat sharing, and rapid response capabilities are vital to mitigate the impact of cyber incidents at scale.
7. Critical national infrastructure remains a significant target, with ransomware and geopolitical tensions driving sophisticated attack motives.
8. Innovation in security technologies, such as AI, post-quantum cryptography, and automatic threat detection, is central to future resilience.
9. Transparency in supply chain and product security, including the adoption of standards like SBOMs, enhances trust and shared defence.
10. Digital identities, passkeys, and secure authentication methods are foundational for the security of digital services and user trust.
11. The evolving cyber threat landscape demands decentralised and flexible responses, including sector-specific interventions and international cooperation.
12. Investment in sovereign cryptography, secure communications standards, and operational resilience remains a strategic priority for national security.

Key Statistics

• 48% of all incidents handled by the NCSC were of national significance this year.
• 4% of these incidents were categorised as ‘highly significant’.
• Cyber incidents of high impact have increased by 50% for the third consecutive year.
• Over 13,000 organisations are part of the free Early Warning service.
• The Takedown Service has removed over 1.2 million phishing campaigns.
• 92% of organisations with Cyber Essentials are less likely to claim on their insurance.
• The number of Cyber Essentials certificates awarded grew by over 17% in the last year.
• Over 75% of Cyber Essentials certificates issued are renewals.
• More than 600 schools are protected by the NCSC’s free cyber security services.
• The CyberFirst programme engaged over 23,000 students.
• The first operational year of LASR delivered key research outputs, including attack taxonomy and AI safety tools.
• The UK’s cryptographic industry actively develops and deploys world-leading secure key management solutions.

Key Discussion Points

• The necessity of elevating cyber security to a strategic governance agenda within organisations.
• The importance of early risk identification and investment, avoiding the costly repercussions of reactive breach response.
• The evolving role of AI and automation in predictive threat detection and autonomous cyber defence.
• The critical importance of sector-specific interventions and international alliances in enhancing resilience.
• The need for transparent supply chains and standardised security practices, including adoption of SBOMs.
• The centrality of digital identities, passkeys, and cryptography in securing modern digital services.
• The strategic value of sovereign cryptography and secure interoperability standards supporting national and international operations.
• The significance of cultivating organisational cyber security culture through leadership and behavioural engagement.
• The role of disruption tactics like threat sharing, attack surface management, and intelligence exchange in reducing attack success.
• The imperative for resilience engineering—improving system robustness, segmentation, and rapid recovery to minimise impact.
• The growing menace from state actors, geopolitical tensions, and sophisticated ransomware campaigns targeting critical infrastructure.
• The ongoing shift towards global standards and partnerships in evolving cryptography, AI, and security assurance.

Document Description

This article is a comprehensive review of the UK’s national cyber security efforts, focusing on strategic threats, technological advances, collaboration models, and resilience-building initiatives. It contextualises the escalating cyber threat landscape, emphasising the importance of organisational leadership, proactive investment, and advanced technology solutions—such as AI and cryptography—in protecting critical infrastructure and national interests. The article highlights the UK government’s approach to fostering a resilient cyber ecosystem, promoting industry standards, and enabling secure digital identities, in alignment with national security priorities.