Cybersecurity in the United States and the United Kingdom: The Need for Trust and Cooperation

Cybersecurity is a growing issue and a significant challenge to the American and British Intelligence Communities. There are major areas of uncertainty that lay ahead both for US and UK intelligence agencies in this field. These include what the precise role of the state and its intelligence apparatus is in regard to cyber defense and cyber offense. In addition, state-based intelligence collaboration to fight cybercrime, particularly intrusions into systems leading to data theft, is complicated by the involvement of multiple actors including non-state hackers and criminals, but also “patriotic hackers,” and states themselves, including their intelligence agencies. Another challenge is how to satisfy public concerns regarding the oversight and regulation of intelligence practices in the wake of the furor that followed revelations about mass data collection and surveillance programs directed by the US National Security Agency (NSA). With these challenges in mind, this chapter seeks to answer three relatively simple and interrelated questions. First, what threats are the US and UK intelligence communities facing in the field of cybersecurity? Second, what are the US and UK governments doing to combat these threats? Third, how are their actions being seen by other states and by civil society