The Digital Office for Scottish Local Government and national procurement organisations Scotland Excel are working on a single supplier framework for security operations centre (SOC) services.
The Digital Office said it is intended to help public sector organisations to strengthen their cyber security posture and resilience through a proactive approach.
The two organisations are convening a user intelligence group to develop the specification for the procurement framework and take the project to the next stage.
They have also invited organisations interested in supporting the project to get in touch.
Longer term, there are plans to create a community of framework users to share their learning and experience.
Dedicated team
The service provider will have a dedicated team of cyber security professionals to perform a series of functions, including: monitoring client organisations’ networks, systems and applications for signs of malicious activity; detecting, analysing and responding to cyber incidents; reporting and communicating incidents, and providing recommendations and lessons learned; and generally improving cyber security.
“A SOC provides 24x7x365 monitoring of council systems and can take actions when certain types of incident are seen or escalate to chosen points of contact,” the Digital Office said.
“Developing this kind of service in-house, with round-the-clock monitoring and specially trained staff would be beyond the reach of a council, so using the private sector to provide this service is the best way to make vital services available to councils.”
It added: “The SOC Framework project is a strategic and ambitious initiative that will help transform organisations' cyber security capabilities.”
