Wartime Codebreaking Site to Become Britain's New Cyber Training Ground

January 1, 2017

Bletchley Park, the site famed for breaking the German Enigma encryption system during World War Two, is to become a training academy for the next generation of cyber defense forces.

Expected to open within the next two years, the school will nurture talented 16- to 19-year-olds with a focus on cybersecurity and conduct research projects in the area.

The National College of Cyber Security is part of a £50 million plan to bolster the UK’s defenses against increasing cyberattacks. It is funded by an industry-wide initiative called Qufaro, which includes representatives from BT and the National Museum of Computing.

The academy is intended to be primarily a boarding college, with around 10 percent of places for day students. It would be free to all students, who would not need to meet specific academic qualifications, but would be selected through aptitude tests, or on the basis of exceptional technology skills such as self-taught coders or students who dabble in making their own websites.

The students would work towards a potential variety of qualifications. Around 40 percent of the curriculum would be devoted to cybersecurity with extra focus on math, physics, computer science or economics.

The project plans to use G-Block, built in 1943, on the Bletchley Park site as the base for the college, with a £5m restoration project for the building.

Kylie Bull began her career in television news at ITN in the UK before moving to print journalism. She has been an editor at IHS Jane's for sixteen years, where she continues today, and was recently the managing editor at Homeland Security Today. Bull has reported on a wide variety of security, geopolitical and counterterrorism subjects and has interviewed world leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and UK Prime Minister Theresa May.

Ransomware and the propulsion of the extortion economy has rapidly eclipsed into a national priority. Recently, we observed the catastrophic impact of a widescale ransomware attack impacting gas pipelines and raising national gas prices overnight.