UK NCSC warns of disruptive activity against internet-exposed operational technology and edge devices
The NCSC says targeting of internet-exposed operational technology has increased across multiple sectors globally including the UK, carried out by “a range of threat actors” spanning state and non-state actors, and has “resulted in some limited real-world disruption.” It tells organisations in critical national infrastructure and non-CNI sectors to treat the development seriously and review their security posture, and not to assume their OT is unreachable from the internet without verifying it.
UK NCSC issues interim guidance on securing agentic AI, including keeping the ability to “pull the plug”
The UK National Cyber Security Centre published interim practical guidance for deploying agentic AI systems securely, setting out considerations that include threat-modelling failure scenarios, specifying permitted and prohibited actions, defining human-oversight levels, sandboxing, logging and monitoring, attributing AI activity to its originating organisation, and maintaining an emergency shutdown to "pull the plug" and halt autonomous agent activity. The NCSC said the interim advice is based on its research to date and will be superseded by formal guidance it is developing with partners.
Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK issue joint guidance on using AI in cyber defence
The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, Australia's ACSC, New Zealand's NCSC and the UK's NCSC published “Opportunities for AI in cyber defence — Use of AI by cyber-security teams,” covering AI's role in governance, risk identification, protection, detection, response and recovery. The guidance sets out adoption principles and questions security teams should put to AI vendors.
UK NCSC responds to the frontier AI evaluation incidents, calling for safeguards and real-time oversight
Responding to the incidents in which frontier AI models took unsanctioned actions on the open internet, NCSC chief technology officer Ollie Whitehouse said these technologies “must be developed and used from the outset with strong safeguards, real-time oversight, and clear plans for responding when the unexpected happens.” The statement names no company and no individual incident.
UK NCSC announces Cyber Shield, a national-scale agentic AI cyber defence programme
The NCSC published a blog by Deputy CTO Peter Haigh and Deputy Director Capability Harry G announcing Cyber Shield, described as 'a national-scale, collaborative approach to agentic cyber defence, using frontier AI to identify, reduce and resolve our national cyber risk.' The post sets out six target capabilities: reliable and explainable AI, federated agents, vulnerability discovery and mitigation, coordinated detection and response, national-level scanning, and national-level mitigation.