Scottish Local Government Seeks National CyberSecurity Ops Centre to Better Protect Against Attacks
Scotland Excel are looking for a partner who can help implement and monitor a managed security operations centre solution, and respond to security events as they arise.
As Holyrood reports Health Secretary Neil Gray has said the recent cyber-attack on NHS Dumfries and Galloway highlights the need for “continued investment” in the cyber capability of the public sector.
The Health Board said it had been targeted in a “focused and ongoing” cyber attack, warning that hackers could have acquired a “significant quantity” of patient and staff data.
NHS Dumfries and Galloway said it was working with Police Scotland, the National Cyber Security Centre and the Scottish government to handle the attack.
Investing in National Cyber Capacity
An active procurement highlights that investment is already underway into such capability. What is particularly interesting about this is that it’s not just for one organization, but will act as a national shared service to be utilized across the entire public sector.
As described in this £7m RFP Scotland Excel are looking for a partner who can help implement and monitor a managed security operations centre solution, and respond to security events as they arise. This is a Prior Information Notice alerting to a full RFP to follow later.
Scotland Excel is the procurement centre of expertise for the local government sector in Scotland. All 32 Scottish councils are currently members of Scotland Excel.
Shared Service Cyber SOC
In cooperation with the Digital Office for Scottish Local Government Scotland Excel has been consulting with Scottish councils and other public bodies that are interested in a Security Operations Centre and managed detection and response service on the collaborative procurement of a framework.
This solution will be a common platform to provide visibility of security events from multiple sources in both the cloud and on-premises environment of the contracting local authority.
The service will also provide a 24/7/365 monitoring of the platform and will take agreed upon delegated actions within agreed SLAs based on the categorisation of the security event. The solution should be based on M365 technologies that allow source log files to be held within the Local Authority.
It is hoped that the solution will offer a range of benefits for Scotland Excel members including:
- Offering a security solution available to all Scottish councils and potentially other Scottish public sector organisations.
- Help to simplify and accelerate the move to a standard system throughout the councils of Scotland.
- Offering financial economies and operational efficiencies.
- Consistent use of data and sources to help monitor and improve security services across all councils
- Develop a sector wide standard for security solutions.
- Increase the security skills of public sector staff and allow the development of a community of interest with a common platform and language.
- Share skills and learning among the community of interest who adopt the solution.
