Rob Demain, CEO at e2e-assure, has told LBC that Iran could sabotage the power grid, stop planes flying and halt the tube network with a single cyber attack.
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The UK is vulnerable to Iran "turning the lights out" by targeting critical national infrastructure, a cybersecurity boss has warned.
Rob Demain, CEO at e2e-assure, a UK cyber security company, told LBC that Iran could sabotage the power grid, stop planes flying, halt the tube or disable mobile phones with a cyber attack.
"If they’re prepared to launch a missile at Cyprus airbase, are they then prepared to launch cyber attacks against UK power supplies or traffic control?" he said.
Mr Demain said there used to be a “dividing line” because a truly destructive cyber attack "could be considered an act of war", but since a British warship was ordered to defend a base in Cyprus from attacks by Iran we have become vulnerable.
"They just want to cause harm, want to make the UK look bad and embarrass us,” he said.
This comes as the Iran war enters in tenth day and US secretary of war Pete Hegseth insisted Iran will "surrender", telling CBS News: “It means we’re fighting to win. It means we set the terms."
Sir Keir Starmer said the UK needs “seriousness, not political games” and that his focus remains on protecting British citizens as British warship HMS Dragon is expected to leave for the Mediterranean next week to defend the military base in Cyprus.
Mr Demain said the government has programmes underway to strengthen defences but questioned whether the pace matches the risk.
Ofgem fines energy companies if they don't meet security requirements and "the government has put money on the table" to ensure national infrastructure is resilient against cyber strikes.
"The question is, are we doing it quick enough?" he said.
Mr Demain also said digitisation has connected systems that were once isolated – while AI is making it easier to find and exploit weaknesses in obscure, legacy technology via reverse engineering.
"Traditionally it was all what we call air gap," he said. "But because of digitisation a lot of systems which traditionally weren’t ever connected are now connected."
An 'air gap' is when a system is physically isolated from external networks to prevent unauthorized access.
Alongside nation-state threats, Mr Demain said “hacktivists” – supportive but non-state groups – are likely to step up nuisance attacks designed to embarrass the UK and disrupt day-to-day services.
“They’d really love to make our online banking not available… to inconvenience us,” Mr Demain added, describing tactics such as overloading websites, defacing pages, or stealing data.
For the public, he urged basic precautions to reduce the impact of breaches and reused credentials.
Consider multi-factor authentication and not using shared passwords to increase your personal security, he said.
The Ministry of Defence has been contacted by LBC for comment.
