GCHQ, the British intelligence agency responsible for information assurance to the British government and army, is putting plans in place to provide companies such as Vodafone and BT with classified information.
The idea behind the program is to help protect critical communication, banking and energy networks against cyber attacks by allowing them access to information gathered by GCHQ’s surveillance systems.
According to Sir Iain Lobban, the director of GCHQ, “business secrets were being stolen on an ‘industrial scale’ with some firms being penetrated by foreign hackers for years at a time.”
The US are apprehensive about GCHQ’s decision to share classified information, due to the fact that BT is closely connected to the controversial Chinese firm Huawei, which supplies much of BT’s infrastructure.
A US congressional report identified this link with Huawei as "a threat to core national security interests" and MI5 have warned that “it would be very difficult to detect or prevent” the Chinese State using Huawei equipment to covertly intercept communications.
A spokesman for GCHQ acknowledged that “the risk of unauthorized access cannot be entirely eliminated” but released the statement:
“We are working with all the companies involved to ensure that the threat information is exchanged, stored and utilized in a secure manner, safe from any adversaries.”
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