Guarding Digital assets: GovAssure to protect UK’s national services from cyber attacks

The Community News/London

Amid ever growing cyber threats to key public services, the UK government on Thursday launched GovAssure, a new cyber security scheme to guard key national digital assets.

GovAssure will be run by Cabinet Office’s Government Security Group with input from National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC)

“New cyber security measures will increase the UK’s cyber resilience and protect the UK government’s essential IT functions from ever growing threats.

Under the new rules, all central government departments will have their cyber health reviewed annually through new, more robust criteria,” UK government said in a statement.

GovAssure was announced by Chancellor to the Duchy of Lancaster, Oliver Dowden, at a speech to CyberUK in Belfast.

Dowden said “Cyber threats are growing, which is why we are committed to overhauling our defences to better protect the government from attacks.

Today’s stepped up cyber assurance will strengthen government systems, which run vital services for the public, from attacks.

It will also improve the country’s resilience; a key part of our recent Integrated Review Refresh.”

It will make use of NCSC’s Cyber Assessment Framework (CAF) to review the assurance measures all government departments have.

CAF will ensure indicators of good practice for managing security risk and protecting against a cyber attack and was designed for making critical national services resilient to attack.

All departments will be assessed by third parties to validate their security measures. In addition, there will be a centralised cyber security policy and guidance to help government organisations identify best practice.

The system is the result of January 2022 Government Cyber Security Strategy (GCSS) to lay out the significant challenges facing digital security and improve its resilience.