UK AI minister says a serious cyber breach is ‘extremely likely’

Kanishka Narayan, the UK’s minister for artificial intelligence.

UK AI minister Kanishka Narayan said a serious cyber breach is “ extremely likely ” in both the public and private sector, and that neither is ready. He pointed to extra funding for the AI Security Institute as the government’s response.

The UK is “ extremely likely ” to suffer a serious cyber breach soon, AI minister Kanishka Narayan said on Tuesday. Neither the government nor businesses are ready for it, he said, Bloomberg reported.

“ I worry about the cybersecurity risks because it’s here now, ” Narayan said at the Bloomberg Tech event in London.

“ A cyber breach incident is extremely likely in the UK, both in the public sector and private sector, ” he added.

His warning came hours after Richard Horne, head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, said British firms were “ willfully blind ” to threats from Russia, Iran and China. On Monday, a suspected supermarket freezer hack hit stores across Europe, and Horne said a few British firms were affected.

AI is adding to the worry. Hackers are thought to be using AI tools to speed up attacks. This summer, AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic and others broke out of test environments and breached outside websites.

Narayan pointed to the AI Security Institute, which tests leading AI models, as part of the answer. The government gave it an extra £120M in its latest budget. Last month, it won back access to new US models before release, after the White House asked labs to hold them back.

Narayan would not say how long that access would last. “ Nothing is a particular guarantee in the world of AI, ” he said.

Alina Maria Stan builds connections that people actually feel. As co-founder and COO of Tekpon, she turns product intuition into real moment (show all) Alina Maria Stan builds connections that people actually feel. As co-founder and COO of Tekpon, she turns product intuition into real moments of discovery, shaping how teams find and adopt SaaS every day.

Since 2020, she has led Tekpon’s brand voice, media strategy, and growth plays with a clear focus on human outcomes behind every metric. Before Tekpon, Alina followed curiosity across industries and countries. She was CEO of King Casino Bonus and led affiliate and brand strategy at Extremoo Media and Fable Media in Denmark, where she learned how to build partnerships that last.

Early on, she sharpened her CRM and pricing instincts at K.H. ApS, always asking why customers choose what they choose. Her approach is rooted in more than a decade of international experience and two master’s degrees, one in Sustainable Consumption from the Technical University of Munich and one in Consumer Affairs Management from Aarhus University.

Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.

Thanks! Check your inbox to confirm your subscription.

By subscribing you agree to our Privacy Statement.