The Governments of the UK and India have agreed on a joint programme to strengthen cyber security in the two countries.
Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Narenda Modi announced the move to build on the Enhanced Cyber Security Partnership agreed in May 2021, saying it will involve co-operation on cyber governance, deterrence, resilience and capacity building.
The announcement accompanied a broader statement on economic co-operation between the countries.
Johnson said: We’ve agreed to work together to meet new threats across land, sea, air, space and cyber, including partnering on new fighter jet technology, maritime technologies to detect and respond to threats in the oceans.”
One element of the agreement on cyber is to increase mutual resilience, with a holistic a holistic and ‘whole of society’ approach.
Public safety protections
“We will complete joint work to identify shared vulnerabilities, and promote effective public-private partnerships, with a view to ensuring decisions on systems design and deployment take into account public safety protections and increasing the awareness and ability of the public and infrastructure owners, to increase resilience against malicious cyber activity,” the prime ministers said in the official statement.
“We will continue to work closely with industry and through international standards organisations to ensure internet of things connectable devices are secure by design.
“We will support efforts to increase the availability and diversity of cyber skills in our workforce and promote people-to-people and educational links to enhance awareness in the domain of cyberspace.”
Johnson and Modi also emphasised the importance of the private sector in developing and implementing new technologies, and in relation to data management.
“We will work in collaboration with industry to deliver shared responsibilities to improve online safety and protect users online, working together with multi-stakeholders,” they said.
“We will continue to collaborate closely with digital service providers, social media and telecommunications companies, encouraging cooperation to embed safety in the services they offer while ensuring the protection of user privacy and their cooperation with the relevant government entities especially with the onset of 5G and 6G technologies.”
