UK Internet Devices Will Be Scanned by the British Government

Cyberattacks and cybersecurity threats are an unfortunate part of modern life. As such, governments around the world have had to find new tactics to deal with the rising cyber threats against their nations’ companies and organizations. The British government, it seems, is taking aggressive actions.

As reported by Bleeping Computer, the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the agency in charge of cybersecurity, has a plan to scan all “internet-exposed devices hosted in the UK.” The agency aims to analyze any vulnerabilities in these devices and networks throughout the country, and report back to the owners so they can better understand how secure (or not) their systems are.

The agency claims these scans will cover any “internet-accessible system that is hosted in the UK,” as well as any common or important vulnerabilities. The agency takes this data in order to create a full picture of the nation’s potential vulnerability to cyberattacks. These scans run off of cloud-based tools hosted on scanner.scanning.service.ncsc.gov.uk, as well as the IP addresses 18.171.7.246 and 35.177.10.231.

While the NCSC aims to collect as little info as possible during these scans, personal data could still be collected as a byproduct of the project, in which case the NCSC will “take steps to remove the data and prevent it from being captured again in the future.”

However, should any British organizations wish to opt out of these scans, they’re free to do so. All they have to do is email the IP addresses they want excluded from scans to the address scanning@ncsc.gov.uk.