Cybersecurity Business Network urges Treasury to back cyber resilience in Autumn Budget

With the Autumn Budget due on 28 October, the Cybersecurity Business Network has submitted a formal representation to HM Treasury calling for targeted fiscal support to help UK businesses defend against a fast-growing cyber threat.

The Cybersecurity Business Network (CBN), which represents more than 80 cybersecurity organisations and acts as secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Cyber Innovation chaired by Dan Aldridge MP, has submitted its representation to HM Treasury ahead of the Autumn Budget on 28 October.

The submission comes against a backdrop of rising cyber risk. The NCSC dealt with 429 incidents in the year to August 2025, 204 of them nationally significant, more than double the previous year. The autumn 2025 ransomware attack on Jaguar Land Rover, which halted production for five weeks, cost an estimated £1.9 billion and required a £1.5 billion government loan guarantee for affected suppliers, illustrating the scale of disruption a single breach can now cause. CBN also warns that AI is lowering the barrier to entry for attackers, making the case for action more urgent still.

CBN’s submission sets out six asks for the Treasury: tax relief to lower the cost of purchasing cyber security from UK providers, sustained funding for awareness, skills and training, simplified procurement for cyber SMEs, support for organisations newly in scope of the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, continued investment in regional cyber growth clusters, and stronger conditions to keep UK cyber scale-ups UK-owned as they grow.

The network argues that proactive investment is far cheaper than reactive recovery, and that fiscal backing now would help translate government’s existing cyber ambitions, including the Cyber Growth Action Plan and the forthcoming National Cyber Action Plan, into real adoption and resilience across the economy.

CBN represents a broad membership spanning certification bodies, managed security providers, threat intelligence specialists, cyber law firms and OT security vendors, collectively supporting a sector worth £8.6 billion in exports and around 70,000 jobs.