National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre is part of GCHQ. It provides cyber-security advice, helps respond to incidents and assesses threats; a future risk assessment is different from a report of an attack that has already happened.

The National Cyber Security Centre is the UK’s national technical authority for cyber security and is part of GCHQ. Operating since 2016, it provides guidance to individuals and organisations and helps manage serious cyber incidents.

Its work includes analysing threats and explaining what organisations may need to prepare for. Those assessments can draw on intelligence, industry information, research and open sources; their conclusions should be read with the qualifications and likelihood language supplied.

The Centre’s November 2026 assessment of AI and cyber intrusion explores possible developments through 2028. It explicitly distinguishes plausible scenarios from predictions. A scenario can help expose a weakness worth addressing without establishing that the imagined event has occurred or will occur on a particular date.