Cyber attacks on big name firms are bringing down websites on a daily basis, officials say "I was speaking to Adidas earlier this summer and to them it's just a daily routine," he said. They're a worldwide global company and somewhere around the world they get some hacking attack on one of their websites because they've annoyed somebody in some way or the other - the team that they support got beat by a team wearing Adidas shirts. That sort of activity is sort of the norm and they have to prepare against that. The frequency of such relatively low-level attacks was also increasing, he added. The Ministry of Defence's networks get attacked daily. I'm not going to comment on how many of those are just chancing their arm, are just noise if you like, and how many are more deliberate attempts to probe their systems. Both do happen. Hostile foreign states could also be behind attacks on Britain's critical national infrastructure (CNI), the facilities, systems, sites and networks upon which daily life in the UK depends, such as communications, energy, health, transport and water. "We've seen attempts by hostile foreign states through cyber space," another senior government official said. Of course there are attacks against the CNI and I'm not going to say whether they were or were not successful clearly, but we spend an awful lot of our time helping and advising members of the CNI to protect their infrastructure. Asked if Britain's armed forces were considering more offensive cyber security tactics, he added: "Part of the investment is in making sure that the doctrine and so on keeps pace with this and that military commanders understand the potential options in this space alongside more traditional ones."