CyberLab Protect
35+
Housing Associations & Real Estate Organisations
Ransomware Attacks
A 2022 ransomware attack on the UK's largest housing association cost an estimated £17 million in operating losses and left tenants unable to report repairs or contact their landlord for weeks.
Phishing & Social Engineering
Phishing remains the top attack vector in the UK, present in 85% of breached organisations. A single click can expose tenant records or hand criminals access to repairs and rent payment systems.
Supplier & Software Risk
Housing relies on a small group of specialist software vendors. The 2023 Capita breach affected around 90 UK organisations and exposed 6.6 million people's data, showing how one supplier failure can cascade.
Invoice & CEO Fraud
Housing associations process large volumes of contractor invoices and grant payments. One UK provider was defrauded out of nearly £1 million through a single email scam impersonating senior staff.
Tenant Data & ICO Penalties
Housing associations hold uniquely sensitive data, from safeguarding cases to financial hardship records. A single breach can trigger ICO action, statutory reporting, fines, and lasting reputational damage.
Building Tech & IoT Exposure
Retrofit programmes, smart meters, damp sensors, and connected building systems are creating new attack surfaces. Unmanaged IoT devices can give attackers a foothold into wider housing infrastructure.
“We know that our customers, colleagues and partners trust us with their personal data, and we take that responsibility very seriously. CyberLab’s deep technical knowledge and proactive support have been instrumental in helping us navigate complex threats with confidence. Their team of experts have become a trusted extension of our IT function.”
– Warren Yeo, Head of IT Services
Moat Homes
Cyber Essentials Plus
A UK government-backed certification that protects against common cyber threats. Often required by Homes England and partner authorities, it gives boards, tenants, and funders confidence in your security posture.
IASME Cyber Assurance
An independent cyber security standard aligned to international best practice. A credible, accessible alternative to ISO 27001, it evidences strong governance and the protection of sensitive tenant data.
PCI DSS
Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is mandatory for any organisation handling card payments. Housing associations process them daily for rent and service charges, making compliance essential.
NIST CSF 2.0
A globally recognised maturity framework that benchmarks your cyber capability across six functions, including governance. Ideal for boards, insurers, and audit committees seeking strategic clarity.
FREE CONSULTATION
Cyber Security Posture Assessment
Your security posture is the top-level summary of the strength and resilience of your cyber defences, and how ready you would be to defend against threats.
We have created this easy-to-complete assessment as a simple, accessible way to identify the areas to focus on to ensure you are secure against today’s cyber threats and prepared to defend against the threats of tomorrow.
Following the 10 Steps to Cyber Security laid out by the NCSC, we will assess your organisation across the ten key areas that should be considered to form a robust yet realistic cyber security strategy.
Our Solutions Keep Housing Associations Secure
Assess your Current Security Posture
Few organisations carry a more sensitive digital footprint than a housing association: tenant case records, contractor networks, financial transactions, and an estate of buildings increasingly wired with smart sensors. Strong cyber security starts with knowing exactly what you have, who’s connected, and where you’re exposed.
Our Penetration Testing services help identify vulnerabilities before they can be exploited, evaluate your ability to respond to security threats, assess compliance with security policies, and improve security awareness across your wider organisation.
Vulnerability Assessments offer a similar approach but are primarily automated, designed to provide a high-level overview of risks across your association’s network efficiently. You can streamline your regular vulnerability assessments with HackRisk, enabling automated monthly assessments to maintain security proactively.
To further enhance your security measures, Vicarius vRx offers a complete patch management system that discovers, prioritises, and remediates software vulnerabilities across your estate, including smaller line-of-business applications often used in housing management.
Additionally, Forescout provides comprehensive visibility across your entire network, discovering and automatically classifying every IP-connected device, from corporate endpoints to repair vans and building sensors.
Our Solutions Keep Housing Associations Secure
Our solutions help housing associations stay secure while focusing on delivering reliable services to residents.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) provides advanced threat hunting, detection, and response capabilities as a fully managed service. With MDR, you’ll have a dedicated team of 24/7 threat hunters to detect, classify, and respond to security threats, including out-of-hours when in-house resource is thin.
Next-gen firewalls, like the Sophos XGS line, offer superior flexibility and application awareness, making them more effective than traditional rule-based firewalls. This flexibility is particularly valuable for housing associations balancing corporate networks, tenant-facing portals, and a mobile field workforce.
To address the frequent risk of email-borne threats, Mimecast can help defend against impersonation fraud, malware, and phishing attempts, which are especially prevalent in invoice-heavy environments like housing.
UEBA (User and Entity Behaviour Analytics) solutions from Guardsix or Forcepoint quietly monitor and analyse user activity, alerting you to any unusual behaviour that could indicate potential system compromise.
Maintain Control of your Security Posture
Maintaining control over your security posture is essential for housing associations balancing tenant service delivery, regulatory expectations, and tight operating margins. Our solutions help you proactively manage and strengthen your defences, ensuring resilience against evolving threats.
HackRisk provides continuous monitoring and actionable insights to identify potential weaknesses before attackers do. Build Reviews ensure your applications and tenant-facing systems are developed with security at the core, reducing vulnerabilities from the start. For housing associations using Microsoft 365, our M365 Assessment optimises configurations and closes security gaps, while our Cloud Security Assessment delivers a comprehensive review of your cloud infrastructure to protect sensitive resident data.
To prepare for real-world threats, Tabletop Exercises simulate attack scenarios, helping your team refine incident response strategies. Our Consulting Services give you access to expert guidance tailored to your association’s needs, ensuring best practices and strong security governance.
Equipping your Team with Knowledge & Support
We will equip your team with the knowledge and guidance necessary to utilise your new systems or programs effectively. Once your solutions are in place, you will receive ongoing support in line with your service level agreement.
You can also benefit from our extensive experience in supporting and maintaining these solutions through our range of Security Support services, tailored to meet the evolving security needs of housing associations.
To enhance your organisation’s security standards, we offer support as an IASME-approved assessor for Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus. We provide options to guide you through securing these accreditations based on your association’s requirements and technical capabilities.
For associations using Microsoft services, our Microsoft 365 consultancy services offer expert assistance with configuring Microsoft services for enhanced security.
HackRisk supports ongoing security awareness with regular bite-sized Security Awareness Training modules and Phishing Simulations, designed to help identify and address any security blind spots among office-based staff, field workers, and contractors.
Obtain & Maintain Key Industry Compliance
Compliance is critical for housing associations handling sensitive resident data and operating under regulatory scrutiny. Our solutions help you meet regulatory requirements and industry standards while building trust with the residents you serve and the partners you rely on.
Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus certifications demonstrate your commitment to baseline security controls, reassuring boards, funders, tenants, and procurement partners. Cyber Assurance offers a structured approach to managing risk and compliance across your organisation, while NIST CSF 2.0 Assessment aligns your security framework with globally recognised standards.
For housing associations processing card payments across rent, service charges, and leaseholder fees, PCI DSS compliance protects payment data and helps you avoid costly penalties. To support compliance readiness, Tabletop Exercises test your incident response plans against regulatory expectations, ensuring your team is prepared for any scenario.
SUCCESS STORY
Moat Homes Increase Protection from Cyber Threats with CyberLab
Moat is one of the South East’s leading housing associations, managing over 20,000 homes and supporting more than 40,000 residents across Kent, Essex, Sussex, and London. With cyber threats evolving fast and an internal IT team unable to sustain 24/7 coverage alone, Moat partnered with CyberLab to deploy Sophos MDR with full wrap-around support, alongside strategic penetration testing. The combination delivers round-the-clock threat detection, expert investigation, and offensive testing assurance, strengthening cyber resilience and governance without adding pressure to internal resources.
Our Vendors Supporting Housing Associations
Sophos MDR
Where others stop at notification, Sophos MDR takes action.
Few organisations have the right tools, people, and processes in-house to manage their security program around-the-clock while proactively defending against new and emerging threats.
Sophos MDR is a fully-managed 24/7/365 threat hunting service delivered by specialists in detecting and responding to sophisticated cyber attacks.
Sophos’ blend of tech solutions and human-led threat hunting elevates cyber defences, frees up IT capacity, and adds expertise without adding headcount.
Forescout
Security is a Journey Shared: An Introduction to Forescout
Security teams across the globe face many challenges, not the least of which is trying to deal with an explosion in the number of digital assets while facing a shortage of cybersecurity personnel. You don’t need more security products; you need a force multiplier – a platform that makes your team more effective and able to focus on what matters.
Guardsix
Guardsix provides converged SIEM solutions to organisations of all sizes, helping you to accelerate threat detection and response with one end-to-end platform.
Guardsix’s SIEM solution gives you visibility across your entire security ecosystem, improving overall security through proactive alerting, machine learning. This enables access to incident and security information in a quick and effective manner.
SecurEnvoy
SecurEnvoy’s Access Management Solution has been specifically designed to meet the requirement for a Secure layered approach to meet compliance requirements.
The flexible approach taken by SecurEnvoy gives you a choice of authentication methods – app, SMS, desktop or hardware tokens – and includes Fido2 (passwordless) capability to provide a simple, secure user experience.
Vicarius
Protect your operating systems and third-party software from vulnerabilities with vRx from Vicarius.
A complete patch management system that discovers, prioritises, and remediates software vulnerabilities across your estate, including the smaller applications that are often forgotten.
Consolidate your software vulnerability assessment and let vRx do the work so you can focus on the threats that matter most.
Mimecast
Mimecast’s tried and tested email security integrates with your existing systems to block email-based threats by leveraging AI, machine learning, and social graphing.
Mimecast scans every email, attachment, and URL to detect and prevent impersonation fraud, ransomware, whaling, phishing and spear-phishing attacks.
With built-in social engineering defences, secure email gateway to block spam and malware, and quarantine features to stop inadvertent and malicious leaks, you can keep you systems and data safe from the most sophisticated attacks.
Microsoft Consultancy
Leverage our expertise with Microsoft consultancy services designed to help you make the most of your Microsoft investment, including:
- MS Defender for: Endpoint | 365 | Cloud
- Device management via MS Intune for: Windows | MAC | iOS | Android
- Identity & Access Management via MS Entra (formerly Azure AD)
- Information Protection via MS Purview
- Security Health Checks against CIS Control
- Secure Score Improvement
What is YourHackRisk Score?
Your Credit Score for Cyber Security
AI-powered cyber risk monitoring with secure dashboard and shareable reports, delivered by security experts.
Dark Web Scanning
Vulnerability Scanning
Recon Scanning
Supply Chain Security
Speak With an Expert
Enter your details and one of our experts will be in touch.
Whether you’re looking to implement basic cyber security best practice, improve your existing defences, or introduce a new system or solution, our team of expert consultants, engineers, and ethical hackers are here to help.
Our team specialise in creating bespoke security solutions and testing packages to improve and maintain your security posture.
We are 100% vendor agnostic and will only ever recommend the best products and solutions for your requirements.
