UK leaders have appointed the new head of intelligence service GCHQ, responsible for providing electronic intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the UK government and armed forces.
The agency will be headed by Anne Kist-Butler, who until recently was deputy director general of strategy for Britain’s domestic intelligence service, known as MI5.
At MI5, Kist-Butler was responsible for all support functions that support MI5’s operational activities, including monitoring and responding to Russian preparations for an illegal invasion of Ukraine by MI5 personnel.
GCHQ is the UK’s principal electronic intelligence agency and is closely linked to the US National Security Agency (NSA) as well as sister agencies in Canada, Australia and New Zealand under the Five Eyes intelligence consortium.
Earlier this month, GCHQ issued a rare statement on its preventive cyber activities, noting that GCHQ hackers have launched cyber operations against disinformation campaigns under the guise of hostile states, against attempts to interfere in elections and against radical militant groups.
Previously, Ann Kist-Butler spent two years at GCHQ as head of the Counter Terrorism and Serious Organized Crime Unit. In addition, she helped launch the national cybersecurity program.
Kist-Butler has held a number of key operational roles within MI5 during his thirty years of work in UK homeland security.
In 1992, the post of head of MI5 was first held by a woman (recall that in the films about James Bond, the role of the head of the British foreign intelligence service, known as MI6, is played by the ‘actress Judi Dench) .
British media reports that Ann Kist-Butler grew up in Cambridge, studied mathematics at Oxford University, is married and has three children.
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