The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which is based in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire with a satellite ground station near Scarborough in North Yorkshire, is stepping up its plans to train a new generation of spies and cyber-intelligence staff to combat the increasing threats the UK is facing.
Ministers in the Cabinet Office and senior officials at GCHQ are looking into training schemes with outside agencies to develop commercial opportunities in the fight against cyber-crime. It is also examining the possibility of becoming an incubator lab for Britain's most talented techies. Small specialist projects could be set up and run within GCHQ before being spun out as high tech commercial operation.
GCHQ already has considerable intellectual property, which could have commercial value outside of the world of spying.
GCHQ to Create Private Eyes — and Ears
Senior sources close to the negotiations told The Independent newspaper: "We have loads of talented people working for GCHQ — and there is no shortage of academic excellence. The question is can we create a secure space where business can work with GCHQ and build an eco-system between the two.
"It is not a million miles from Teach First [the educational training programme in England and Wales] and we have thought about that link. The idea is to say to graduates you do not have to sign up to GCHQ for your whole career and there are options for you in the private sector," the source said.
The idea builds on a programme launched late in 2014 by the Communications-Electronics Security Group CESG, the Information Security arm of GCHQ, in partnership with APM Group, a global examination institute.
One of the key objectives of the programme is to enhance the professionalism of those working in, or thinking about working in the cyber security industry, which is worth over £6bn and employs around 40,000 people.
Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office, said: "It is part of this Government's long-term economic plan to ensure that we have people with the right skills in order to make the UK one of the safest places to do business online. Assuring high-quality cyber security training courses, against the Institute of Information Security Professionals skills framework, provides organisations with the right assurance. This shows that the training they are using for their staff meets GCHQ's high standards in terms of content and delivery."
Cryptography is Child's play
The training scheme follows hard-on-the-heels of the launch of Cryptoy, described by GCHQ as "a fun, free, educational app about cryptography". It is an app designed by GCHQ for use by secondary school students and their teachers.
The app enables them to understand basic encryption techniques, learn about their history and then have a go at creating their own encoded messages. These can then be shared with friends via social media or more traditional means and the recipients can use the app to try to decipher the messages.
Threat for Cyber-Crime Growing
One of the main tasks of GCHQ is to identify cyber espionage activity targeting UK industry and gather intelligence to tackle emerging threats. "Of all the issues we face, cyber-attack is the fastest growing," GCHQ stats on its website.
GCHQ has had to open up about its operations in the wake of the revelations by former CIA operator Edward Snowden, now living in temporary asylum for a second year in Moscow. In 2013, he alleged that GCHQ had access to the US intelligence gathering programme PRISM and, therefore, to the
content of communications in the UK without proper authorisation. Privacy campaigners said that, in so doing, GCHQ had circumvented UK law.
However, the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament concluded that — based in GCHQ evidence — they had conformed to the agency's statutory duties.
But in the wake of Snowden's revelations there were reports that the spy agency has suffered "significant" damage in its ability to monitor and capture serious organised criminals. It's been claimed that intelligence officers are now blind to more than a quarter of the activities of the UK's most harmful crime gangs and terrorists after they changed their communications methods compromised by the Snowden leaks.
The ‘spook first' initiative — although not new — is perhaps a sign that the spying agency is finally coming out of the closet in response to the challenge of finding new methods of surveillance while making their methods more acceptable to the general public. And scooping a potential premium from the private sector from its Intellectual Property.
