This morning at the North Tower Lounge in Tower Bridge, BAE Systems announced the launch of The Intelligence Network, along with Vodafone and CyLon.

The initiative’s aim is to ‘engage, unite and activate a global community of security professionals and industry influencers in their fight against cybercrime’, which has become an increasing threat to businesses and society (with increasing attacks against critical infrastructure).

The new fight

Founding members of The Intelligence Network include Andrzej Kawalec at Vodafone, Jonathan Luff at CyLon and James Sulivan at RUSI, all of whom contributed to a report into the challenges facing the cyber security community in the digital age.

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This report, also released today, addresses the changing nature of cyber criminals, the impact of GDPR, privacy and regulation, attitudes to risk, the importance of intelligence sharing and new models of collaboration.

Drawing on the insight and intelligence captured within this report, BAE Systems and its partners have signed up to a Manifesto – a series of commitments that will bring about critical changes in leadership, culture, behaviour and processes to tackle the evolving threat posed by cybercrime.

“When discussing the cyber security landscape with our customers, partners and employees, there seems to be a groundswell of support to work together more closely for the greater good,” said Julian Cracknell, Managing Director at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence.

“The Intelligence Network is an initiative which we hope will unite a community of like-minded global security professionals and industry influencers who share our vision. Through this Manifesto, we are setting out the ambitions of The Intelligence Network and establishing a framework for creating a safer society by 2025.”

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“Through the work of The Intelligence Network, we want to kick start conversations about the future of cyber defence. Today we are inviting organisations to join the Intelligence Network, it is open to all, free to join and encourages active participation at all levels. It has been conceived as a result of the latest input from the community on what needs to change, both in terms of the emerging issues that represent the greatest threat to society in a digital age, but also the way we work together to tackle these issues head on as one collective. Our call to the industry is this: be part of the change you want to see.”

The Manifesto

The Manifesto is focused on three distinct areas of transformation: collaboration, simplicity and certainty. It aims to achieve the following by 2025:

• The sharing of intelligence, understanding, approaches, technology and resources to ensure co-ordinated action in response to new threats.
• Transparent security so that organisations and individuals can see what they do and do not have in place, where there are gaps and their implications.
• Aggregated, verified information provided to appropriate law enforcement and government organisations.
• Technology to be secure by default – both on purchase and through its life – and maintained through automatic updates that don’t overload the memory or workload of individuals.
• Security to be available as an affordable utility for those that need it.
• Security to be managed through standard corporate risk management structures in the same way as health & safety.

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Led from the front

Cyber security should be led from the top down, and The Intelligence Network is not different. It will be led by a committee comprising of industry influencers and those passionate about driving change in the security sector, but will be open to anyone to join.

“Cybercriminals use creativity and collaboration to operate at the cutting edge of technology. From a cyber defence perspective, we need to be doing the same,” said Jonathon Luff, Co-Founder of CyLon. “We need to rethink models of collaboration; small businesses and large enterprises must work hand in hand and we must start to place greater emphasis on the sharing of information, rather than the attribution of blame. With the creation of The Intelligence Network, we should start to see a culture of openness that challenges and changes mindsets, patterns of behaviours as well as policy and legislation. I’m excited by what this community can do – and the impact we can have.”