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The UK government’s conflict, stability and security fund doubled its spending on overseas cyber security programmes last year, in a sign of the growing threat to peace posed by online hackers.
Baroness Lucy Neville-Rolfe, Cabinet Office minister, told the Financial Times that spending by the cross-Whitehall fund, led by her department, rose to £25mn in 2022-23 as overseas governments asked for help in hardening their cyber resilience and fighting cyber crime.
“The cyber risk in fragile states is obviously very significant,” she said in an interview, describing how British money and expertise had been channelled to Ukraine to boost its resistance to Russian cyberattacks over the past two years.
The UK’s assessment is that the vast majority of cyber crime threats worldwide originate from Russian-speaking groups.
Neville-Rolfe said ministers in foreign governments had raised ransomware attacks, where computer systems are paralysed unless a payment is…
