As the much-vaunted Cyber Security and Resilience Bill looks set to continue its progress through parliament following the King’s Speech on Wednesday 13 May, the UK government has urged businesses to sign up to its Cyber Resilience Pledge
First trailed last month by security minister Dan Jarvis at the National Cyber Security Centre’s (NCSC’s) annual CyberUK conference, the pledge will launch later this year and sets out three concrete actions that organisations should be taking: making cyber security a board-level responsibility; signing up to the NCSC’s Early Warning Service; and requiring Cyber Essentials certification across their supply chains.
“Cyber security is now fundamental to economic growth, job creation and the resilience of the services people rely on every day,” said cyber security minister Baroness Lloyd.
“The UK has a world‑class cyber sector that is creating skilled jobs and protecting our economy – and government is doing more by investing in its own defences, legislating to require more of essential services and setting clear national standards,” she said.
“As threats evolve, businesses of all sizes need to step up and take practical action now. The Cyber Resilience Pledge is a clear call for companies to strengthen their defences, protect their customers and play their part in keeping the UK secure and competitive,” added Lloyd.
Cyber growth
The pledge forms part of a wider series of actions to shore up Britain’s cyber defences in light of fast-evolving, artificial intelligence (AI) enabled threats, and boost the nation’s cyber sector.
According to newly-released figures, the cyber security industry contributed £14.7bn to the economy in 2025, up 11%, with the number of British security firms growing by 20% to 2,063, and the number of people employed in the sector up by 2,300.
The government urged business leaders to harness the expertise and innovation of this new wave of startups to drive adoption of more secure technology – such as the use of memory safe programming languages such as Java or Rust, which can help protect against illicit memory access by bad actors. Westminster highlighted research undertaken by the AI Security Institute (AISI) and warned that traditional cyber protections alone are no longer enough.
It also highlighted the growing number of AI-centric security products and services, the availability of which grew by 68% in 2025, reinforcing the UK’s status as an innovation leader, and an early-responder to new security threats, and added that the AISI’s advanced capabilities demonstrated that the country is not standing still in response to the problem.
The government’s latest announcement on the topic comes as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warns that AI-powered cyber attacks may precipitate a global financial crisis if left unchecked.
The organisation said that the debut of frontier models such as Mythos highlighted significant governance challenges and warned that inconsistent oversight from country to country could weaken the interconnected financial system – a risk it deemed particularly acute for emerging and developing economies.
The IMF called for more international coordination, information-sharing, and expanded capacity if global financial stability is to be preserved.