Recommendation 3

We also found sceptical views in some parts of the cable industry about the risks of co-ordinated attacks. We agree that resilience across the sector is generally robust, major disruption is unlikely, and hype is unhelpful. But we caution against adopting ‘business as usual’ industry views to determine national security risk: individual operators have few financial incentives to prepare for a crisis that may never come. The Government, by contrast, has a duty to prepare competently for low-likelihood, high-risk scenarios. The lessons of 9/11, the financial crash, Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine are reminders that such events do happen. (Conclusion, Paragraph 38) 62