Government organisations and their digital services are relentlessly targeted - by highly capable adversaries operating in cyberspace.
Building stronger cyber defences is vital.
Secure by Design is a strategic priority.
It’s a major part of both the Government Cyber Security Strategy
and Transforming For A Digital Future; the 2022 to 2025 roadmap for digital and data.
The approach aims to increase cyber resilience by introducing a consistent approach
to building effective and proportionate security into digital services.
It applies all the way through the digital delivery lifecycle, as services are being planned, designed and built.
Secure by Design encourages organisations to make security the responsibility of everyone in the project team
and drives effective collaboration between the different roles involved.
Under the approach security risks are continuously managed
at the right level, throughout the digital delivery lifecycle.
The approach aims to increase cost efficiency by baking security into digital delivery from the start
avoiding the extra expense of resolving security issues at the end.
Secure by Design will also help government organisations
on their journey towards meeting their assigned GovAssure profiles
and Cyber Assessment Framework Indicators of Good Practice.
Secure by Design will be mandatory for central government and arms length bodies.
The approach is founded on 10 principles.
Each of these focus on achieving outcomes
linked to specific security challenges.
The 10 principles have been expanded to 21 activities, designed to support organisations to meet the principles.
The approach provides a couple of practical tools too.
One is a “security controls taxonomy”, which helps organisations to select security controls as part of risk management.
The second is a “self-assessment tracker”
designed to support delivery teams to monitor their progress in adopting Secure by Design within their projects.
Please find out more about Secure by Design
by checking out our web pages on security.gov.uk
You can also get further information and support
and sign up for updates by emailing the Secure by Design mailbox.