The Government is warning bosses of Britain’s most critical industries to boost cyber security or face substantial fines for leaving themselves vulnerable to attack.

Energy, transport, water and health firms could be fined up to £17 million if they fail to have the most robust safeguards in place against cyber attack.

New sector-specific regulators will be able to assess critical industries to make sure plans are as robust as possible.

A simple, straightforward reporting system will be set up to make it easy to report cyber breaches and IT failures so they can be quickly identified and acted upon. This is intended to ensure UK operators in electricity, transport, water, energy, transport, health and digital infrastructure are prepared to deal with the increasing number of cyber threats.

The measures will cover water suppliers, electricity, oil and gas companies, healthcare, air, sea, road and rail transport, telecoms groups and digital infrastructure providers.

It will also cover other threats affecting IT such as power outages, hardware failures and environmental hazards. Under the new measures recent cyber breaches such as WannaCry and high profile systems failures would be covered by the Network and Information Systems (NIS) Directive.

The incidents would have to be reported to the regulator who would assess whether appropriate security measures were in place. The regulator will have the power to issue legally-binding instructions to improve security, and – if appropriate – impose financial penalties.

"Essential services and infrastructure to be primed and ready to tackle cyber attacks" 

Margot James, Minister for Digital and the Creative Industries, commented:

“Today we are setting out new and robust cyber security measures to help ensure the UK is the safest place in the world to live and be online.

“We want our essential services and infrastructure to be primed and ready to tackle cyber attacks and be resilient against major disruption to services.

“I encourage all public and private operators in these essential sectors to take action now and consult NCSC’s advice on how they can improve their cyber security.”

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the UK’s centre of cyber excellence established in 2017, has today published detailed guidance on the security measures to help organisations comply which are based around 14 key principles.

National Cyber Security Centre CEO Ciaran Martin said:

“Our new guidance will give clear advice on what organisations need to do to implement essential cyber security measures.

“Network and information systems give critical support to everyday activities, so it is absolutely vital that they are as secure as possible.”

The new measures follow the consultation held last year by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport seeking views from industry on how to implement the NIS Directive from 10 May 2018.

Fines would be a last resort and would not apply to operators which have assessed the risks adequately, taken appropriate security measures and engaged with regulators but still suffered an attack.

Penalties will be fixed at a maximum of £17 million and the new legislation will be made clearer for companies to know whether they have to comply with the NIS Directive.

Click here to access the NCSC Guidance