Source · Select Committees · National Security Strategy (Joint Committee)
Recommendation 8
8
Not Addressed
The Government’s resilience concept focuses too much on ‘having lots of cables’.
Conclusion
The Government’s resilience concept focuses too much on ‘having lots of cables’. This pays insufficient attention to the network’s actual capacity to absorb shocks and does not account for onshore vulnerabilities and long-term trends towards a more brittle system. There is also limited understanding of much damage the system can sustain before data stops rerouting properly, triggering temporary systemic connectivity failure. This does not appear to feature as a serious consideration in the Government’s contingency planning. (Conclusion, Paragraph 62)
Government response summary AI-generated
The government's response addresses emergency services' business continuity plans and their reliance on foreign internet servers, which does not engage with the committee's conclusion about the government's overall resilience concept regarding network capacity, shocks, and onshore vulnerabilities.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Government Response
Not Addressed
HM Government · verbatim extract
Not Addressed
The Government agrees with the Committee that there should be more detailed technical plans on management of the UK’s cable systems in the event of serious disruption to subsea cables. The Government will regularly engage with operators to understand the current capacity of cables and operators’ ability to reroute traffic in the event of significant disruption. We recognise that available capacity is not static and may take time to activate, making real-time reporting difficult to achieve. Operators may lack visibility into the types of data carried over their infrastructure, particularly when capacity is sold to third parties. Therefore, to understand critical data flows DSIT and Lead Government Departments will work with critical sectors to conduct sector-specific technical impact assessments and understand how they rely on the connectivity provided by subsea telecoms cables. Based on the findings of this work the Government will consider what additional contingency plans may be necessary, including for scenarios where high-concentration terrestrial routes are temporarily disabled. We will also use the findings to inform the Government’s National Emergency Plans framework for Subsea Cables (NEP-S).
Read the full response on Parliament ↗