Nicholas Hopton and the MEA hosted an absorbing event about digital and cyber impact on global security. Speakers included moderator, Tim Passingham of Cambridge Management Consulting,  Vipul Narula , CEO, Commercis Technology,Tom Burton– CMC, Steven Whitchurch,Atolls CISO & VP of Enterprise Services And a second panel on Technology in Conflict & Post-Conflict Environments Andro Mathewson ,STARK Defence / PHD King’s College London , Michael Nevard , The HALO Trust,Lizzie Jones – Operations Director,  Supacat.

The panels discussed the current cocktail and growing threats from malware, bad actors in the criminal world and malign states, including Russia, Iran and China. Everyday thousands of hacks and attacks are ranged at the UK and international companies and countries. These are sub threshold warfare but are designed to damage our economies and steal and disable our businesses, capabilities and government, and to reduce trust in our democracies and governments.

The outlook is set to be more dangerous as AI is deployed by our enemies, and breaches will be more frequent. The UK is seen as a top trophy for our enemies and businesses such as JLR, M&S and COOP have suffered billions of pounds damage.

So, what is our response? The panel agreed that we all need to take simple and sensible steps to mitigate damage, including providing firewalls between departments and data sets, educating the public on setting passwords and the simple resets and browser actions that protect our computers, and build in resilience to our systems.

There is software that enables us to monitor attackers, to use AI (Anthropic) that can find vulnerabilities in our coding, and for corporates to focus resources on resilience to assume breaches and vulnerabilities and build in appropriate firebreaks and create systemic change in their IT and software applications. However, people and employees are the most significant risk who need to be educated and trained to use systems effectively, through simple actions like not accepting browser bots.

The second discussion centred on application and developments in warfare, in particular the new drone capabilities being applied in Ukraine and the implications for military strategy and use.