ACCORDING to Associated Press, the head of the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre, Richard Horne, said the most serious cyberattacks in the U.K. are now carried out by hostile nations including Russia, Iran and China. He warned that the U.K. could be targeted at scale if it became involved in an international conflict.
The NCSC currently handles around four nationally significant cyber incidents a week, with criminal activity such as ransomware remaining common, though state-backed attacks represent the most serious threat. The article notes comments from U.K. security minister Dan Jarvis and references China’s and Iran’s sophisticated cyber operations, as well as Russia’s “hybrid activity” moving beyond the battlefield.
It also recounts discussions from the CyberUK conference in Glasgow and contrasts the difficulty of defence with the inability to pay a ransom to recover data in a conflict scenario. Written by Associated Press on 22 April 2026.