Defence Online

NCSC advice to improve public sector cyber security

Homeland July 5, 2017

In the light of recent high-profile cyber attacks, such as wannacry and Petya, the National Cyber Security Centre has released up-to-date advice on how businesses and the public sector can improve their cyber security and protect their data.

By implementing just four ‘Active Cyber Defence’ programmes, basic cyber security will be improved immediately across the public sector. UK businesses can assure themselves of better protection from the government’s brand and be able to use the ACD services themselves in the future.

Improving basic defences is the key, and the vast majority of cyber attacks are fundamentally about return on investment.

The government’s National Cyber Security Strategy, published in November 2016, endorsed a set of measures known as the Active Cyber Defence (ACD) programme. The programme aims to make infrastructure, products and services automatically safer and easier to use safely by organisations and individuals.

These four measures are described in lay person’s terms, require no additional money to implement and are not overly technical or complex to implement.

1. Blocking bad things from being accessed from government systems (Protected DNS)
2. Blocking bad emails pretending to be from government (DMARC anti-spoofing)
3. Helping public bodies fix bad things on their website (Web Check)
4. Removing bad things from the Internet (phishing and malware mitigation).

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Cyber cyber security NCSC public sector UK

Post written by: Vicky Maggiani

Vicky has worked in media for over 20 years and has a wealth of experience in editing and creating copy for a variety of sectors.