It’s relentless.
That is the word Anne Keast-Butler will use when she steps up for the first-ever GCHQ annual lecture. She won’t mince words. The head of Britain’s intelligence agency will warn that Russia is targeting our critical infrastructure, our voting booths, and our supply chains with a kind of hybrid warfare that gets more intense every single day.
It’s not just a threat. It’s happening right now.
The message for businesses and the public? Make cybersecurity ten times more urgent. Today. Not next quarter.
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Keast-Butler expects to detail how GCHQ is disrupting Russia’s attempts to smuggle Western technology back out of the region. They are fending off cyber assaults, yes, but they are also countering sabotage and assassination attempts that feel plucked from a cold war thriller.
But the window to stay ahead is shrinking.
Technology is moving faster than policy can catch up. China has morphed into a science and tech superpower. Their intelligence and cyber agencies possess sophisticated capabilities that keep security experts up at night. With artificial intelligence accelerating this shift, the ground beneath our feet isn’t just moving—it is slipping away.
What now?
The directive is for the tech industry and national security firms to stop reacting. Anticipate the future instead. Drive advancements at the speed of the frontier. Together.
And it doesn’t stop at the boardroom level. The call for action reaches your living room.
Switch those passwords for passkeys. Actually do it. It’s harder, but it works. For wider society, we need to hardwire security into new tech before it ships. Protect the supply chain.
Why are we so slow?
Dr. Richard Horne, who leads the National Cyber Security Centre under the GCHQ umbrella, already laid some of this out earlier this year. He noted that hostile states are responsible for the majority of significant cyber attacks on Britain. We’re talking about China, Iran, and Russia.
Four attacks per week.
That’s the average. Four. Times.
Horne warned businesses to prepare for a reality where you cannot pay a ransom. If the UK gets dragged into an international conflict, the scale of targeting would shift dramatically. You can’t just throw money at it then. You need to be secure beforehand.
The advice is stark.
Lock it down.
Because someone else is already looking.
