Anyone hopeful that cybersecurity would get more than a passing nod in today’s Budget 2016 speech will be hugely disappointed
While we at IT Pro had hedged our bets on Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, expanding on his cybersecurity spending spree speech from the end of last year, the only mentions of “delivering security” and “a cocktail of risk” referred to economic stability. This stands in stark contrast to November last year, when he uttered the word ‘cyber’ a staggering 134 times in a 45-minute speech – there wasn’t even a solitary mention in the 2016 budget delivery.
Having sat through the entire hour and a boring bit of it, we were convinced that IT security would surely feature at some point. But no, nothing; a whole lot of nothing. Given that Osborne plans, or at least we assume he still plans, to double cybersecurity spending to £1.9 billion over the next five years, this lack of any further detail was quite incredible. When will we find out exactly where the money will go? When will we discover if it is money wisely spent? This silence does not bode well.
