Security News > 2021 > July > UK's National Cyber Security Centre needs its posh Westminster digs, says Cabinet Office, because of WannaCry

Parliamentary criticism of the National Cyber Security Centre's "Image over cost" London HQ is being shrugged off by the government because of the GCHQ offshoot's successful response to the WannaCry ransomware outbreak.

George "Eleventy Jobs" Osborne, who at the time of NCSC's establishment in 2016 was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, overrode procurement processes and gave the panicking Cheltenham set at GCHQ their desired Westminster base - and not the grubby Shoreditch "Tech hub" the spies feared they'd be dropped into.

The ISC said [PDF] Sir Mark Lyall-Grant, who was National Security Advisor when the lease had to be decided, initially refused to sign off GCHQ's left-field suggestion that the new NCSC should be based in Westminster.

Not to be lectured by some jumped-up group of backbench MPs, the Cabinet Office's formal response to the ISC also pulled out what it clearly imagined was a trump card: the NCSC's WannaCry response role.

"The need and timeliness for the incorporation of the NCSC was immediately demonstrated in the UK's response to the WannaCry attack in May 2017," boasted the Cabinet Office.

More to the point, NCSC - being a GCHQ offshoot - splits itself between London and other sites to this day, adopting "Fragmented working arrangements, resources and operational capabilities," stated the Cabinet Office's public response.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/07/28/ncsc_cabinet_office/