Scottish Government Debate: Strengthening Scotland’s Cyber Resilience

1. Neil Gray S7M-01517 That the Parliament recognises that strong cyber resilience is essential to protecting people's rights, safety and access to essential public services as well as ensuring Scotland’s national resilience, economic prosperity and the delivery of public services; notes that the increasing reliance on digital technologies is exposing individuals, businesses, public services and the democratic system to growing cyber threats, including cyber crime, online fraud, scams, and ransomware; acknowledges the importance of improving public awareness and personal online security and protecting people’s safety; recognises that cyber resilience is a shared responsibility requiring coordination and action across all sectors, and robust regulation of new technologies; welcomes progress through the Strategic Framework for a Cyber Resilient Scotland, the CyberScotland Partnership and the Scottish Cyber Coordination Centre; recognises that these strategies must be effectively resourced; supports more robust cyber resilience standards for public, private and third sector organisations, and supports continued collaboration and cooperation with partners across Scotland, the UK and internationally to identify, manage and respond to evolving digital risks. Further details available for S7M-01517 2. Pauline McNeill S7M-01517.1 As an amendment to motion S7W-01517 in the name of Neil Gray (Strengthening Scotland’s Cyber Resilience), insert at end “; welcomes the UK Government’s Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill as a step towards building nationwide protocols for protecting critical infrastructure, and calls on the Scottish Government to ensure that areas within its devolved competence are adequately resourced to establish any additional security measures or reporting mechanisms that may be required.” Further details available for S7M-01517.1 3. Amanda Bland S7M-01517.3 As an amendment to motion S7M-01517 in the name of Neil Gray (Strengthening Scotland’s Cyber Resilience), insert at end “considers that, despite a substantial framework of strategies, significant gaps remain in the implementation of cyber resilience across Scotland’s public sector; expresses concern that only 64% of Scottish public sector organisations have reported carrying out cyber resilience exercises in the previous 12 months; believes that the priority should now be the effective implementation, testing and enforcement of existing cyber resilience standards and to resist the tendency to create further strategies and frameworks to achieve simple objectives; understands that resource constraints are limiting the ability of organisations to implement lessons learned from incidents and exercises to address identified weaknesses, and calls on the Scottish Government to establish clear minimum standards for regular testing of cyber defences and incident response arrangements across the public sector, and to ensure that public bodies have sufficient financial, technical and specialist resources to address identified vulnerabilities." Further details available for S7M-01517.3 4. Maggie Chapman S7M-01517.2 As an amendment to motion S7W-01517 in the name of Neil Gray (Strengthening Scotland’s Cyber Resilience), insert at end “; recognises that digital sovereignty is an increasingly important aspect of cyber resilience, including the risks arising from excessive dependence on a small number of multinational technology companies and foreign-owned digital infrastructure; further recognises the importance of strong privacy, human rights and democratic safeguards; supports diversified, interoperable and secure digital infrastructure, open standards, responsible public procurement and investment in Scotland’s cyber security skills, research and public-interest technological capability; notes steps being taken at a European level to strengthen digital sovereignty; agrees that the UK Government should be more proactive in pursuing digital sovereignty, and believes that the Scottish Government should begin work to develop a Scottish digital sovereignty strategy, given that this will be necessary in the event of independence.” Further details available for S7M-01517.2 5. Alex Cole-Hamilton S7M-01517.4 As an amendment to motion S7M-01517 in the name of Neil Gray (Strengthening Scotland’s Cyber Resilience), insert at end: "; recognises that cyber resilience depends on the security and resilience of the physical infrastructure on which digital services rely; understands the risks to critical digital infrastructure of accidental, environmental and deliberate disruption, including sabotage and the actions of hostile actors, and recognises the particular importance of resilient and diverse connectivity for Scotland’s island and remote communities.” Further details available for S7M-01517.4