Landing at the NCSC (glad I brought my towel)

Summary

Ollie Whitehouse joined the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) as CTO in October 2023 and sets out immediate priorities for improving the UK’s cyber resilience. He emphasises turning cyber into a more evidence-driven science, making adversaries pay for their actions, tackling pervasive technical security debt, ending “security as a premium” in products and services, and using market signalling to drive capability and capacity. He also stresses preparing for major cyber events as a certainty, not a possibility.

Key Points

Ollie joined NCSC after 27 years in industry and is impressed by the technical calibre within the agency.
Priority: make cyber more scientific and data-driven — gather evidence of what actually works in real-world defences.
Highlighting examples like seL4, CHERI/Morello and Rust as evidence-backed mitigations for memory-safety issues.
Concern over commercial claims lacking independent evidence; information asymmetry disadvantages defenders.
Plan to impose cost on adversaries across R&D, supply, access and persistence, with Active Cyber Defence 2.0 playing a role.
Technical security debt is widespread and hard to measure — priorities include literacy, measurement methods, and incentivising paydown.
Argues cyber features should be baseline, not premium — compares to Volvo giving away the seat-belt patent.
NCSC will signal market needs (e.g. OT/ICS capability gaps) to attract investment and build capacity over a multi-year horizon.
Preparation should assume a major cyber event will happen — exercises and readiness must scale accordingly.

Why should I read this?

Because Ollie’s laying out the playbook for how the UK plans to shift from guesswork to proper evidence, make attackers pay, and stop security being an optional extra. If you care about practical cyber resilience, developer incentives, or where the market will move next — this is worth five minutes of your time.

Context and Relevance

This piece signals a pragmatic, systems-level approach from the NCSC: moving towards evidence-based defences, stronger active defence, market nudges and long-term capacity building (especially for OT/ICS). It ties into broader trends such as secure-by-design initiatives, secure AI development, post-quantum transition, and the need for measurable outcomes in security investment. For vendors, investors and security teams, the blog is a clear indicator the UK will favour verifiable, demonstrable security improvements and market signalling over expensive, unproven claims.