Security News > 2021 > March > Defence Industrial Strategy suggests the UK is ready to start taking its homegrown infosec industry seriously
In a change from its recent bombastic blather, the British government has published a new Defence Industrial Strategy that looks like it wants to put the infosec industry on a gold-plated pedestal.
"Government also needs to provide complementary support to industry and ensure that the public sector can access the right skills to remain an intelligent customer," said the Defence and Security Industrial Strategy whitepaper published this week.
Last week's Integrated Defence Review has pushed the British infosec market into sharper focus across government and it looks not only as if government wants more involvement in growing the infosec industry - but that it has also started thinking about how to achieve that.
While the IDR was full of "Global Britain" bombast even as it slashed military budgets, headcounts, and equipment programmes, the industrial strategy underpinning it looks like a far more credible document setting out a clear intent to deepen existing ties with industry - as far as infosec is concerned anyway.
Professor Alan Woodward of the University of Surrey told The Register the whitepaper might mark the start of government taking a much more active interest in the UK cyber security sector's commercial fortunes than it has to date, musing that the UK "Can exercise soft power in a way, by helping with [government] being in control of the intellectual side, intellectual properties of these as they start to emerge and become strategic assets for the world."
"Together, government and industry seek to identify improvements in working practices that meet the needs of both parties to ensure successful delivery of Crypt-Key projects," said the review, describing how GCHQ offshoot the National Cyber Security Centre oversees the UK cryptography industry.