Cyber security experts checked ‘more than 600m websites in 2018’

More than 600 million websites were checked by online security experts last year, it has emerged.

John Browning, deputy director digital government at the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), revealed the figure during a panel discussion on active cyber defence (ACD) at the CyberUK conference in Glasgow.

Up from only eight million website checks in 2017, he told the audience that “almost all UK local authorities'' have used the web check.

Mr Browning said: “We found and fixed more than 4,000 vulnerabilities in their websites.

“We're then going to add all the requests from functionality to have shared accounts and to run new checks for new vulnerabilities.

“This is just one part of what we're doing to sustain the ACD services throughout time.''

He also said there was a “huge rise'' in the number of mail checks, which are able to tell if an email is genuine or spoofed.

More than 1,400 organisations have signed up to the programme including HMRC, an example brought up by GCHQ director Jeremy Fleming in his morning speech.

Earlier on Wednesday, NCSC CEO Ciaran Martin said: “One of the exciting things about this conference is we're looking at things where, for example, it used to be the case that UK Government brands like HMRC the tax authority were one of the most spoofed in the world - it was in the top 20 most spoofed brands.

“It's now away outside the top 100 because we've done some really clever things.

“What about if we scale that up not just in bits of the UK Government but everywhere in the UK, everywhere in the Five Eyes, everywhere in the allied world?

“It would be enormously powerful and keep us all safer."