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Foreign powers, ransomware gangs and AI threats are driving a surge in incidents affecting British businesses and government systems, [the British Intelligence Agency] GCHQ has warned.

Britain has suffered double the number of “nationally significant” cyberattacks in recent months compared with the year before, according to GCHQ.

Richard Horne, chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), said that the GCHQ unit has managed 200 cyberattacks since September, which includes “twice as many nationally significant incidents as the same period last year”.

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Referencing the recent attacks on Marks & Spencer, Co-op and Harrods, Horne told the CyberUK conference in Manchester that “the threat picture is diverse and dramatic” and called ransomware “a persistent threat”.

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Rod Latham, director of cybersecurity at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, said: “Our statistics indicate that four in ten businesses are attacked in a year, three in ten charities — millions of cybercrimes in a year.”

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Horne called China “the pacing threat in the cyber-realm” and “a cause for profound and profuse concern”.

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On Russia he said that “we see a direct connection between Russian cyberattacks and physical threats to our security” and warned that amid talks on Ukraine, “it is almost certain that Russia will continue its wider cyber espionage activity … against Ukraine and supporting countries”.

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