The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has begun sounding out suppliers for two new services for government bodies.
It said it is running a market engagement exercise to develop a scheme that will assure a new Cyber Incident Response Level 2 Service and a Cyber Incident Exercising Service.
The former will provide a degree of assurance for incident response services offered by companies to local government and SMEs. It will complement the existing CIR Service, which will soon be rebranded Cyber Incident Response Level 1 Service and currently supports central government and large businesses with complex IT systems.
The Cyber Incident Exercising Service will provide assurance of scenario based exercising services for central and regional government and medium to large sized organisations.
NCSC has invited companies wishing to become assured service providers as to contact it through Comm.Schemes@ncsc.gov.uk.
It said the market engagement is likely include reviewing the proposed operating model, looking at how its technical standards for the two services will be implemented, and how management information is collected.
Image from iStock, Traitov
