The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) - part of government intelligence agency GCHQ - says it defended the UK from 723 cyber incidents in the last year, among other attacks listed in its fourth annual review.

The NCSC said it protected the country from an average of 60 attacks per month during a year which saw its resources “proactively focused on the coronavirus response”.

In the three years since launching, the organisation had been involved in mitigating an average of 602 cyber incidents per year.

“In a year heavily influenced by the pandemic”, said NCSC, the review highlights its support for the healthcare sector, such as scanning more than one million NHS IP addresses for vulnerabilities leading to the detection of 51,000 “indicators of compromise”, and working with international allies to raise awareness of the threat of vaccine research targeting.

With cyber criminals looking to exploit public fear over the pandemic with Coronavirus-related online scams, the NCSC and the City of London Police launched the Suspicious Email Reporting Service, which received 2.3 million reports from the public in its first four months. “This resulted in in thousands of malicious websites being taken down”, said the NCSC.

The NCSC said it handled more than three times as many ransomware incidents compared to last year.

Lindy Cameron, chief executive of the NCSC, said: “This review outlines the breadth of work delivered, largely against a backdrop of the shared global crisis of Coronavirus.”

Jeremy Fleming, director of GCHQ, said: “The world changed in 2020 and so did the balance of threats we are seeing. The years ahead are likely to be just as challenging.”

The organisation partnered with KPMG to produce the Decrypting Diversity report earlier this year, which sets out a series of commitments to help address issues around diversity and inclusion in the cyber security sector.

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