CyberLab Protect
25+
Local Authorities
Ransomware Attacks
Ransomware remains the top threat to councils. Sophos reports 98% of attacks on state and local government now end in encryption, with services offline for weeks and recovery costs more than doubling.
Phishing & Social Engineering
Phishing is the most common attack vector against councils, with the LGA reporting 75% of authorities cite it as their top threat. A single click can hand attackers access to citizen data and core systems.
Third-Party & Supply Chain Risks
Councils rely on a wide network of suppliers. The 2023 Capita breach affected dozens of UK authorities and exposed 6.6 million people's data, showing how one supplier failure can cascade across the sector.
Legacy & Unpatched Systems
Government audits identified 319 legacy systems across the UK public sector, with around a quarter rated 'red' for risk. Unsupported software leaves councils exposed to known, unpatched vulnerabilities.
DDoS & Hacktivist Disruption
The NCSC has warned of hacktivist groups targeting UK organisations with DDoS attacks. Knocking council websites and digital services offline disrupts citizen access and erodes public trust.
Data Breach & ICO Penalties
Councils handle highly sensitive citizen data, from social care records to electoral rolls. A single breach can trigger ICO action, statutory reporting, fines, and lasting reputational damage.
"CyberLab’s team have been responsive, knowledgeable, and easy to work with throughout. Their expertise, combined with the capabilities of the Sophos Taegis MDR platform, has delivered tangible improvements overall security posture.”
– Graham Burke, Security and Infrastructure Manager
East Lothian Council
Cyber Essentials Plus
A UK government-backed certification that defends against common cyber threats. Widely adopted across local government, it demonstrates baseline assurance to citizens, suppliers, and audit committees.
IASME Cyber Assurance
An independent cyber security standard aligned to international best practice. It offers councils a credible, accessible alternative to ISO 27001, evidencing strong governance and data protection.
PCI DSS
Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is mandatory for any organisation handling card payments. Councils process them daily for council tax, parking, and leisure services, making compliance essential.
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 Local Authorities Secure
Assess your Current Security Posture
Few organisations run digital estates as complex as a council’s, spanning every service, supplier, and citizen-facing platform your community relies on. 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 council’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 applications that are often overlooked.
Additionally, Forescout provides comprehensive visibility across your entire network, discovering and automatically classifying every IP-connected device.
Our Solutions Keep Local Governments Secure
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.
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 council networks that support diverse user needs across multiple service areas, enhancing security while maintaining efficient access.
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 local government.
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 councils operating in a complex, high-stakes environment. 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 systems are developed with security at the core, reducing vulnerabilities from the start. For councils 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 citizen 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 council’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 councils and local authorities.
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 council’s requirements and technical capabilities.
For councils 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 your staff and elected members.
Obtain & Maintain Key Industry Compliance
Compliance is critical for councils handling sensitive citizen data and operating under statutory duty. Our solutions help you meet regulatory requirements and industry standards while building trust with the citizens you serve.
Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus certifications demonstrate your commitment to baseline security controls, reassuring residents, suppliers, and audit committees. 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 councils processing card payments across council tax, parking and leisure services, 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.
Local Authority Success Story
SUCCESS STORY
East Lothian Council Enhance Threat Detection & Response with Sophos Taegis MDR
East Lothian Council needed to strengthen its security operations to protect essential public services across the region. Faced with a more advanced threat landscape, a complex IT estate, and short timescales to act, the council sought a partner with deep public sector understanding, rapid deployment capability, and predictable long-term costs. CyberLab delivered on all three, implementing Sophos Taegis Managed Detection and Response as the council’s new always-on security foundation.
Our Vendors Supporting Local Authorities
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.
Forcescout
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.
Logpoint
Logpoint provides converged SIEM solutions to organisations of all sizes, helping you to accelerate threat detection and response with one end-to-end platform.
Logpoint’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
E-BOOK
The 2025 Security Testing Report
The Top 12 Vulnerabilities Found During Penetration Testing
Discover the 12 most frequent vulnerabilities uncovered by CyberLab’s penetration testers over the past year.
Part 1 highlights common administrative issues like weak passwords, unpatched systems, misconfigured services, and social engineering risks.
Part 2 dives into technical flaws, including SQL injection, XSS, and weak mobile or encryption controls.
Vaccination UK
“Chess and CyberLab were pivotal in helping Vaccination UK take a step forward into modernising our services, streamline our reporting and workforce, and assisting in rolling out a huge step change in how we deliver our services.”
– James Hart, Head of Operations for NHS Services, Vaccination UK
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.
