The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has set up a Defence Innovation Cyber Security and Assurance Team (DICSAT) to support its Defence Assurance and Information Security (DAIS) service.
It is based in London and will provide advice on support for innovation projects.
The MoD has begun a procurement for specialist support for up to two years with a budget of £2 million.
The move derives from a recognition that innovation projects tend not to have their own security SMEs in place to support DAIS, and that the body does not have the resources to provide sufficient support to all of the projects. The problem is intensified by the use of emerging technologies, many of which are not familiar to existing staff.
As a result, DICSAT has been set up to provide security assurance for each stage and/or sprint in innovation projects. The procurement notice says that without this assurance the teams could be denied access to MoD infrastructure and information.
Mandate and alpha
An early draft mandate for the DICSAT has been drawn up and an alpha process generated for assessing the risks of a particular sprint.
DAIS provides a range of information assurance support to defence and its industry partners including: oversight, tracking and provision of management information for all defence accreditation activity; assessment of evidence submitted in support of the accreditation process; final sign-off and provision of a certificate and letter of accreditation; and the progression and review of risk balance cases prior to sign-off by the MoD senior information risk owner.
Image from Harland Quarrington/MOD, OGL v1.0
