The NCSC wants to build an AI-powered 'Cyber Shield' to protect the UK from hackers – here’s how it’ll work

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has laid out its plans for the national Cyber Shield, first announced in May this year.

The aim of the project is to build a nationwide, collaborative approach to agentic cyber defense, using frontier AI to identify, reduce, and deal with national cyber risks.

According to the NCSC, the move comes amidst concerns that cybersecurity risks are growing in “scale, speed, and sophistication” - particularly from hostile states and organized crime groups targeting public services.

"Frontier AI is accelerating this trend, with the potential to shift the balance in favour of attackers – and with serious implications for defenders,” the NCSC said.

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“We need to keep our critical technology systems secure against both existing and emergent cyber threats."

As part of the project, AI systems will initially identify vulnerabilities and threats at machine speed, before moving on to automated remediation.

Further down the line, the agency expects AI to eventually generate and share insights, detect and contain breaches, and work under the control of their owners across government and non-government bodies.

These agents, the NCSC noted, will need to be built on strong foundations of data, identity, reliability, cybersecurity, and regulatory compliance.

The NCSC will first partner with network defenders across government and critical UK sectors to test and deploy new capabilities, with the plan to then transition to commercially-scalable solutions to improve national resilience.

NCSC targets reliability in Cyber Shield scheme

To make all this happen, there's a fair amount that will need to be done – some of which will present big challenges.

The NCSC highlighted the need for reliable and explainable AI for cybersecurity that can be used confidently in production environments at scale, and authorized by system owners to make safe, reliable, and significant real-time changes in support of cyber defence.

Agents will run national-level operations under the control and authority of individual organizations, and have the ability to identify, trust, and communicate between themselves.

Elsewhere, national-level scanning will involve the automated monitoring of critical UK IP ranges for exposed vulnerabilities, as well as analysis of aggregated data to understand national level exposure.

The agency noted that workflows will need to be automated to allow rapid national-scale mitigation, such as the automated blocking of known malicious domains and networks.

A big, bold plan

Plans detailed by the NCSC have been welcomed by industry stakeholders as a positive step in protecting the UK against rising threats. Whether or not this is an achievable goal is up for debate, according to Pete Luban, field CISO at AttackIQ.

"The biggest challenge will be getting government, critical infrastructure, and private industry to share intelligence in a way that is trusted and actionable," Luban commented.

"If bought into, Cyber Shield could give the UK a stronger foundation to spot risk earlier, validate defenses faster, and respond before attackers gain momentum.”

Kevin Marriott, senior director of cyber content strategy & IP at Immersive, said the true test will be in how the government makes sure the system is utilized where it can bring value and return on investment.

"It would also be beneficial to hear how they plan to deal with the output from the frontier models, and whether they put robust practices in place which enable them to deal with the outputs," he said.

"If this is part of a well-considered strategy, it represents a significant step forward. If, however, it is a move towards ungoverned AI without clear oversight or a defined plan for where and how it should be used, then it is not.”

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