What is the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill?
The Cyber Security and Resilience Bill aims to strengthen the UK’s defences against cyber threats. Due to the evolving cyber crime landscape, the bill is part of the big picture to modernise the UK’s cyber security framework.
We all rely on essential services such as healthcare, power and water and the new bill directly addresses the increasing cyber threat to these services. Announced as part of the King’s Speech on 17 July 2024, the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill focuses on the following:
- Strengthening Cyber Defences: The bill aims to enhance the UK’s cyber defences by expanding regulations and ensuring more digital services and supply chains are protected. With the rising number of cyber attacks on essential services, this bill looks to ensure that critical infrastructure and the digital services that companies rely on are secure.
- Improving Security Standards: It provides greater powers to regulators, enabling them to enforce new standards and investigate security shortcomings more effectively.
- Mandatory Incident Reporting: The Cyber Security and Resilience Bill mandates increased cyber incident reporting, helping to gather better intelligence on cyber threats and improve overall resilience.
Following recent large-scale attacks, such as the cyber attack on NHS hospitals which saw sensitive data leaks and disruption to service, the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill will bring much needed cyber security protection for the UK’s essential services.
Although the legislation marks a fundamental moment for a growing threat to UK organisations and essential services, it has been highlighted that there is still much to do and needs to be done at an accelerated pace.
UK data centres deemed as critical national infrastructure (CNI)
Due to increasing cyber threats, the Government has announced that data centres will now be classified as critical national infrastructure. This puts data centres in the same box as water, energy and emergency services systems and it means that there will be a significant boost in protection for data centres moving forward.
Classifying data centres as CNI recognises that they are essential to the country’s security, economy and public health and because of this change, UK data centres will receive an enhanced level of protection.
Moving forward, data held and processed in these data centres, such as financial, NHS and personal smartphone data are less likely to be compromised during cyber attacks and IT outages.
This is because greater Government support will be provided to data centres, including anticipating critical incidents and recovering from them. There will be a dedicated data infrastructure team that will monitor and anticipate potential threats, and priority access to security agencies in the event of a cyber attack.
How does the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill affect your organisation?
Although it has not yet been outlined in the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill exactly how it will affect organisations, it could follow in the footsteps of the NIS2 legislation in Europe.
The bill could mean the following for organisations:
- Increased Security: Organisations could expect improved cyber security protection and measures for their data, reducing the risk of cyber attacks. This is particularly crucial for sectors that rely heavily on data, such as healthcare and finance.
- Regulatory Compliance: Organisations might need to comply with stricter cyber security protocols and regulations, which may require additional investments in security infrastructure and training.
- Operational Resilience: With data centres due to receive more robust support, organisations might expect greater operational resilience, minimising disruptions to their services and operations.
How Sharp can help you
It’s not just essential services that need to boost their cyber security protection, every UK organisation must take cyber security seriously.
At Sharp, we work with a variety of organisations across various industries, including essential services to provide a multi-layered cyber security approach.
Our bespoke services are designed around your organisational needs, wants and goals. We offer proactive cyber security protection to support and protect your data, systems and teams against cyber threats.
From securing organisational data and end-user devices with our Endpoint Security Solutions, to keeping your critical systems safe with our Managed Firewall. If you are interested in learning more, visit Sharp’s Cyber Security webpage.
