GCHQ recruits eight universities to help counter cyber attacks

01 Apr 2012 By Richard Tyler – The Telegraph

Intelligence agency GCHQ has selected eight universities as collaboration partners to improve government and industry cyber security.

The Treasury has admitted it has been under sustained attack by foreign intelligence agencies, with George Osborne saying that wider government received up to 20,000 malicious emails every month.

Ministers set aside £650m of new money last autumn to better protect key infrastructure and defence assets from “cyber warfare”, with half that going to GCHQ.

The Government hopes that encryption techniques and other expertise that is not considered top secret might have commercial applications and wants to see more companies working with universities.

Science minister David Willetts said the eight universities – which include Bristol, Belfast, Southampton and Imperial College London – were selected for the strength of their existing research in the field.

“The amounts of cyber attack carry on rising. Governments are targets and we are very, very robustly protecting our data,” he said. “Businesses, especially some with sensitive data tend to be targeted. What we don’t want is for people to be in a state of polite denial. We want people to recognise there is a problem and engage with them.”

A GCHQ spokesman said: “GCHQ’s recognition of eight universities as academic centres of excellence in cyber security research underlines our conviction in the vital role that academia has to play in nurturing future cyber security talent to support the UK’s prosperity in our cyber age.”