Departments to undergo independent audits of cyber resilience

Departments to undergo independent audits of cyber resilience

Credit: Debora Cartagena, USCDCP on Pixnio


Whitehall departments will be required to go through an external audit of their cyber resilience to help ministers “understand cyber risk across government”.


Called ‘Gov Assure’, the regime will ask all government entities to undergo independent assessment of their cyber set-up and risk profile. This process will be based on the guidelines set out in the Cyber Assessment Framework of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).


The measures were first unveiled as part of the Government Cyber Security Strategy, published earlier this year. 


Cabinet Office minister and paymaster general Michael Ellis said: “This will create a single lens through which we can understand cyber risk across government and enable government departments to accurately assess their level of cyber assurance and highlight priority areas for improvement. Gov Assure will also help us to take a strategic view of government vulnerability – to help inform a strategic roadmap to truly defend as one.”


Ellis’s comments were made during PublicTechnology’s annual Cyber Security Summit event, held in London last week. Delivering the opening keynote presentation, the minister gave attendees an insight into the intent behind public sector cyber plan, and the plans for its implementation over the coming months and years.


The 84-page policy document sets out an ambition for the public sector’s “critical functions to be significantly hardened to cyberattack by 2025”.


By the end of this decade, the plan is for all public bodies to be “resilient to known vulnerabilities and attack methods”.


2030Date by which public sector bodies should be resilient to all current known vulnerabilities


£2.6bnAmount of money committed in the recent s ..

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