Government appoints soldier to head cyber defence forces

The UK government has appointed a senior military officer to head the Defence Cyber Operations Group.

Armed forces minister Nick Harvey told the House of Commons that he had appointed a "very senior military officer" – understood to be Major General Jonathan Shaw – to the post on a four-year contract.

The new Ministry of Defence global operations and security control centre was now up and running, he said, and was monitoring for signs of attack against the UK critical infrastructure.

Handing such an important role to a non-technical leader has advantages and disadvantages, according to Graeme Stewart, Sophos' public sector business development director. Having a leader from outside the industry would give an opportunity for someone not coloured by strong personal preferences for specific types of security strategy but the approach also has a downside.

"The potential negative is that information and cyber security is a highly specialised topic requiring a great deal of technical knowledge and understanding. It's a complicated subject to get to grips with," he said.

Another concern was spending, he said. Any funds for cyber-protection needed to be evenly distributed, not concentrated on a central facility. Hackers would be scanning the whole infrastructure for weaknesses and if outlying systems were ignored they could provide an easy vector of attack.