Queen to open much-delayed National Cyber Security Centre today

Long-promised security centre finally opens today

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) - which was originally planned as long ago as June 2009 by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown - will finally be opened today.

It follows repeated promises and delays in setting up the organisation, which is intended to be "the authoritative voice on information security in the UK", according to Matt Hancock back in March 2016 (when the government made another announcement about the NCSC), when he was a minister at the Cabinet Office.

Back then, Hancock had promised that the Centre would open in October 2016, and added: "It will bring the UK's cyber expertise together to transform how the UK tackles cyber security issues.

"It will be the authoritative voice on information security in the UK and one of its first tasks will be to work with the Bank of England to produce advice for the financial sector for managing cyber security effectively."

Part of the reason for the long delay - apart from political dithering - was the design and development of the Centre's IT architecture, according to its chief architect.

The system was built around the Government Technology Code of Practice and a ‘cloud first' approach, although the cloud provider has not been disclosed.

"The NCSC formed from several different organisations, including CERT-UK, CESG, the Centre for Cyber Assessments and part of CPNI," he wrote in a Gov.uk blog post.

He continued: "None of the existing IT systems designed for working with OFFICIAL information met the needs of the new organisation. Nor did they strike the right balance of security, usability, and functionality required by our new mission. So we had to build something new."

The Government Digital Service (GDS) was also called in to help out in the development, which was largely delivered using an agile development methodology.

In terms of security, the infrastructure deployed NCSC's own advice on securing enterprise technology, and uses the native IPsec virtual private networking clients on end-user devices, configured to use PRIME.

The Centre will be opened by the Queen today.