Bristol-based specialist defence management consultancy Warner McCall has won a £2.8m, two-year contract with the Ministry of Defence to work on a campaign to protect the UK from ‘information attack’.
With adversaries already using information as an effective weapon, the MoD’s Directorate of Joint Warfare Information Advantage Change Campaign (IACC) was set up to ‘enable defence to compete in the information age’. 
It aims to provide defence organisations with a better understanding of the threat, taking the standpoint that information is no longer just an enabler, it is a fully fledged lever of power.
The MoD has committed to “rapidly up its digital game” and fundamentally shift the way it thinks, acts, invests and moves to counter this new information threat.
It says that hostile countries and non-state organisations already understand vulnerabilities and seek to exploit them through ‘information battles’ in which information is ‘weaponised’.
Warner McCall will provide specialist change, transformation and technical support to the existing military team at the IACC to enable them to put information at the heart of how defence operates.
Over the next two years, the team will design and drive a number of projects that aim to build momentum and deliver irreversible change into defence.
Warner McCall CEO Johnny Norris said: “We are very pleased to be supporting Major General Jim Morris and his team to transform the way that defence operates in the information age.
“With the broad nature of this campaign, we welcome the opportunity to use our significant experience in complex transformation projects to help deliver this critical change for defence.”
Warner McCall is already entrusted by government departments to deal with threats from nation states. In recent years it has leveraged experience gained in defence and national intelligence to help businesses successfully defend, respond, recover and learn from cyberattacks.
It includes major international companies such as Airbus, Deloitte, Leonardo and BMT among its clients.
