Uk ready to fight ‘sustained and serious’ posed by Russia: Top official
Russia is posing a “sustained and serious” threat to the UK, a senior British security official has warned, noting that London remains on high alert against possible attacks by Moscow against Britain’s institutions and businesses.
Ciaran Martin, chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), said the UK has been monitoring Russia’s movements with greater sensitivity ever since the poisoning attack against former Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury earlier this year, the Express reported Wednesday.
“We’ve been on heightened alert since the horrors of Salisbury and have put in place various protective measures. Russia has been a serious threat to our cyber security interests for a considerable period,” he said.
“I can’t really go into the detail of the day-to-day intelligence picture of what we are spotting, but let me be clear – we remain on high alert,” he added.
Martin claimed that Russia had a tendency to target “critically important” national assets of the UK rather than carrying out “consumer or citizen-facing” attacks.
The NCSC operates as part of the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) spying agency based in Cheltenham.
GCHQ head Jeremy Fleming said recently that his organization was ready to counter an “active and real threat” posed by the “brazen Kremlin”.
Fleming further warned that British spies were ready to “deploy the full range of tools from across our national security apparatus” against Russian agents that were operating against the UK.
“Our job is to make the UK the hardest target possible and the most resilient target possible – whether that’s from a Russian attack, another state attack, or from criminal groups who are going to damage the economy,” he said.
The West, particularly the UK and the US, have repeatedly accused the Kremlin of conducting cyberattacks and real world operations against as part of what they call the “Russian aggression.”
Russia, however, has dismissed the accusations, denouncing them as an extensive “Russophobia” campaign designed to isolate Russia.
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