The newly launched Cyber Monitoring Centre (CMC) has announced the appointment of Ciaran Martin as Chair of its Technical Committee.  

A not-for-profit organisation launched on 1 January 2024, the CMC claims to represents a new approach in the UK’s fight to tackle cyber events by categorising them on a scale of one to five based on how widespread they are and its financial impact to UK organisations.  

The CMC says this will bring greater clarity and transparency to these complex incidents and enable UK organisations to better prepare for and respond to, these events.  

CMC new categorisation

The CMC will work with partner organisations to gather relevant data about cyber events which will then be reviewed by its Technical Committee to determine their categorisation.    

The Technical Committee will be chaired by Ciara Martin, who previously set up and led the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre and is an advisor to several governments on cyber security.     

“I am excited to be involved in the Cyber Monitoring Centre. It addresses a key challenge in UK cyber risk response, namely trying to quantify the impact of systemic cyber events as they are occurring,” said Martin.  

“This whole area of measuring the severity of incidents has proved a really tricky one but if we can crack it, we can hugely improve the way we deal with cyber security.”  

Expansion

Martin is joined by other UK cyber experts including: Sadie Creese, Professor of Cyber Security at the University of Oxford and previously of QinetiQ and the Ministry of Defence; Dan Jeffery Managing Director at Daintta and previously Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for NHS Blood and Transplant and lead for the NHS’s National Cyber Programme; Jamie MacColl, Research Fellow in cyber security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI); and Julian Williams, Head of the Department of Finance at Durham University and formerly Director of the Durham University Institute of Hazard Risk and Resilience.  

“Entirely independent of any one company, organisation or sector and made of individuals with extensive and different experiences, our Technical Committee is a vital component to ensure a trusted event categorisation,” said William Mayes, CEO of the CMC.  

“I am delighted that we have attracted such high calibre individuals to this innovative and valuable initiative and am confident that our committee will become viewed as a reliable, expert assessor of systemic cyber events.”  

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