The new regulations and the “code of practice,” which will help providers take the steps needed to comply, were developed in collaboration with the National Cyber Security Center and Ofcom and aim to incorporate good security practices in how carriers operate and manage their networks and services.
The new rules will take effect in October, and from there on, Ofcom will become judge, jury, and executioner and monitor if providers comply with them. If they don’t, then Ofcom could fine them up to 10% of their turnover, and if a company continues to violate the new regulations, it could be fined £100,000 per day.
Some of the things Ofcom will monitor are whether providers keep their equipment, networks, and personal data they process protected from cyberattacks. The regulator will also observe if carriers understand their security risks, if they can identify malicious activity in their systems and if they know and control who has access to their operation and services.
Of course, before all that, telecoms will need to take appropriate measures to meet the new requirements. Some of the things they have to do are identify and assess which of their equipment is exposed to potential attacks, and tighten the control over their systems even further. Carriers will also need to improve their detection of malicious signals that might cause outages, increase their understanding of the ways their networks could be compromised, and ensure that security is one of their top priorities. Providers must achieve all this until March 2024.
At the moment, telecoms can set and use their own security standards, but as the government’s Telecoms Supply Chain Review discovered, they “have little incentive to adopt the best security practices.” According to NCSC’s Technical Director, Dr. Ian Levy, we rely on telecoms for our lives, economy, and many of the services we use, and these new regulations will provide the “security and resilience of those networks.”
But while we wait for providers to prepare for the government’s new rules, if you are in the market for a new smartphone, feel free to visit our best EE phone deals, top Vodafone phone deals, best O2 deals, and best Virgin Media deals.
