Summary
Dr Richard Horne highlighted the scale of cyber threats against the UK’s critical infrastructure at RUSI’s Annual Security Three-quarters of cyber attacks impacting organisations within the UK’s critical infrastructure over the past year can be linked back to hostile state actors, the head of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has revealed. In a major speech today, the CEO of the NCSC Dr Richard Horne said more than 200 cyber incidents affecting the UK’s critical national infrastructure and its supporting ecosystem were managed by the NCSC in the year to May 2026, with around 75% of those believed to be linked to state actors. Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute’s (RUSI) Annual Security Lecture, Dr Horne, warned that hostile states, such as Russia, China and Iran, are increasingly targeting the systems that underpin the UK’s essential services, arguing that cyber security should not be treated simply as a risk to be managed, but as an ongoing contest with capable adversaries. ...this contest is not confined to a compact space. It is not like a wrestling match in a closely defined territory as some have suggested. It is far more akin to a football or basketball game, played across a large field of play, where success depends on how you operate across the entire pitch.