New cyber security school opened at Shrivenham’s Defence Academy

A new cyber security school has been opened near Swindon.

The Defence Cyber School at the Defence Academy in Shrivenham will address specialist skills and wider education in line with National Cyber Security Strategy objectives.

Armed forces minister Mark Lancaster, who opened the school, hailed the facility as “a state-of-the-art centre of excellence that will train more personnel across defence and wider government in dealing with emerging threats”.

The new school is the product of a joint investment from the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the National Cyber Security Programme.

As threats from hostile states continue to become more disruptive, the MOD says the UK faces a deliberate attempt to destabilise secured peace and prosperity.

This ultimately saw the introduction of the 2016 National Cyber Security Strategy, which provided £1.9 billion of transformative investment in cyber defence to meet these threats head-on.

The next step in Britain’s cyber defence upgrade will be the establishment of rapid response teams from April.

Consequently, teams of specialist incident responders will be available to deploy to locations around the UK and overseas to tackle malicious cyber activity.

General Sir Chris Deverell, commander of the UK's Joint Forces Command, said these “threat-hunters” give Britain the ability to identify, isolate and respond to these threats, whenever and wherever they might arise.