The UK’s top cybersecurity agency has warned that the country would face cyberattacks involving artificial intelligence-powered malware on its key infrastructure, including airports, hospitals, and power stations within two years.
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said hostile actors are “highly likely” to use AI to increase the scale and efficiency of their cyberattack operations.
“For decades, we have collectively got away with doing tech on the cheap,” NCSC chief Richard Horne said on Monday.
“In the coming months, we face a real prospect of an unprecedented rise in the number of cyber incidents,” Dr Horne said.
Russia and China would start using AI more “routinely” in cyberattacks, the report warned, adding that Chinese cyber activity is the “most sophisticated and sustained cyber challenge facing the UK”.
“Vulnerabilities that have been tolerated for far too long can now be discovered and exploited at a scale that was once unimaginable,” Dr Horne said in a speech, ahead of the launch of NCSC's State of the Cyber Nation report.
He urged all organisations across the UK to “take the responsibility now to make different choices”, including addressing the failure to invest in their technology adequately.
Failing to make these choices will lead to leaders “having to look their investors, shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, in the eye and explain...when food isn’t on shelves, lights aren’t on, businesses have gone under”, the NCSC chief....
