PROTECTING EUROPE AGAINST LARGE-SCALE
CYBER-ATTACKS
CHAPTER 1: OUR INQUIRY
Introduction
1. There is now scarcely any activity of our
daily lives which does not rely on the Internet.[1]
Banking,[2] travel and
tax, trading, saving and dating—everything is increasingly
performed online and so depends on the Internet. And while any
country can survive without online shopping, to be deprived for
any length of time of online communication for government, energy
or defence, to give only some examples, can rapidly bring a country
to its knees. We explain in the following chapter how this briefly
happened to Estonia.
2. Internet failures can be the result of malicious
attacks or natural disasters, but all States take precautions
to guard against them, both by themselves and through the private
sector. The European Union takes a major interest in the organisation
of such precautions in the Member States, attempting to improve
them both individually and collectively. In April 2009 the Commission
sent a Communication to the Council giving its views as to how
the Member States might through the EU strengthen the security
and resilience of their critical information infrastructures (CIIs)
and develop their defences against cyber-attacks.[3]
3. In this inquiry we have looked at the part
which the EU can play in helping the United Kingdom and other
Member States to prevent and detect cyber-attacks, to respond
to them, mitigate their effects and recover from them; and in
particular at the strategy set out in the Communication, and the
programme of work it envisages. But the Internet is a global network
of networks, and cyber-attacks can be launched from anywhere,
making use of insecure computer systems sited anywhere on the
planet. The EU cannot be looked at in isolation either from the
Member States individually or from the rest of the world, and
we have looked at these questions in a global context.
Conduct of the inquiry
4. This inquiry has been conducted by Sub-Committee
F (Home Affairs), a list of whose members is printed in Appendix
1. They issued a call for written evidence in October 2009; this
is reproduced in Appendix 3. In reply they received evidence from
25 persons and bodies. Between November 2009 and January 2010
they took oral evidence from 11 witnesses, and received supplementary
written evidence from a number of them. A full list of the witnesses
is at Appendix 2. To all of them we are most grateful.
5. We have been fortunate to have as our specialist
adviser Dr Richard Clayton of the University of Cambridge Computer
Laboratory. We are most grateful to him for his expertise in the
subject and for his guidance throughout the inquiry.
6. We recommend this report to the House for
debate.
1 By the first quarter of 2009 nearly 65% of United
Kingdom households had a fixed-line broadband connection, and
more than 8 million people had at some point used their mobile
phone to access the Internet: Ofcom: The Communications Market
Research Report, 6 August 2009 Back
2
Over 22 million people now bank online in the United Kingdom:
Payments Council, p 154. Back
3
Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament,
the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the
Committee of the Regions on Critical Information Infrastructure
Protection: "Protecting Europe from large-scale cyber-attacks
and disruptions: enhancing preparedness, security and resilience"
(COM(2009)149 final, Council document 8375/09). http://register.consilium.europa.eu/pdf/en/09/st08/st08375.en09.pdf
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