How we’re supporting the sector
Cyber Assessment Framework for Local Government
DLUHC is supporting councils in England to build their cyber resilience and meet the aims and objectives of the Government Cyber Security Strategy.
DLUHC will be introducing the Cyber Assessment Framework (CAF) for Local Government from 2024 to provide a clear cyber security standard for the sector.
You can learn more about how we’re developing the CAF and what this will mean for councils on the CAF for Local Government webpage.
Cyber Support
Since 2020, the Cyber Support programme has provided £19.9 million in funding to support local authorities to address serious cyber security vulnerabilities. Ninety percent of councils have now fully implemented offline backups of their critical data, and the remaining 10% have work in progress to achieve this by May 2024.
The support the councils received included:
- bespoke technical remediation plans agreed with each council in the cohort
- ensuring councils have effective backups in place – significantly reducing potential disruption in the event of ransomware attack
- regular network scanning to track progress and identify emerging vulnerabilities
While the cyber support programme is coming to an end, we’ll continue to work through the remediation plans with the councils that are already enrolled and focus on how we can support all councils through the Cyber Assessment Framework.
Defend as One
The cyber threat to the local government sector is very real, present, and continuing to evolve. In response to this, we are accelerating plans to support the sector to ‘Defend as One’ – harnessing the value of sharing cyber security data, expertise and capabilities across the sector. We will share more on our plans in due course.