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CASE STUDY • NATIONAL CYBER SECURITY CENTRE 3-MINUTE READ

The National Cyber Security Centre boosts public sector safety in the face of cyber threats

The next phase of its protective domain service is ensuring a safer digital future for UK services, people and organizations

What NCSC achieved

100B

number of queries analyzed in the first month after go-live

350M

number of cyber threats blocked in the first month after go-live

2B

number of cyber threats blocked in the first 6 months of operation

Defending the digital frontier

In response to the continual rise in cyber-attacks, the NCSC partnered with Accenture and Cloudflare on a scalable, agile Protective Domain Name Service (PDNS) platform that provides robust threat protection.

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In recent years, cyber-attacks have surged in the UK, posing serious threats to public institutions.

2024 saw a threefold increase in incidents from the previous year, with half of UK businesses and a third of charities experiencing a cyber breach or attack.

While major cyber-attacks are highly damaging, a flood of low-level incidents can be just as harmful, disrupting operations and draining cybersecurity resources.

The majority of these types of attacks exploit vulnerabilities in the internet's domain name system (DNS), redirecting users away from legitimate web pages and toward potentially malicious sites.

National Cyber Security Centre

The leading cyber defense organization for the UK, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), had a Protective Domain Name Service (PDNS) in place to guard against DNS attacks.

PDNS filters and analyzes every DNS query and protects users and systems by blocking malicious web pages.

With the UK’s threat environment continuously expanding, the NCSC needed a scalable, agile PDNS platform for enhanced threat detection.

They partnered with Accenture and Cloudflare to design and implement the next phase of their PDNS system to provide more robust protection for public sector organizations and critical services against threats like phishing and malware, filtering out billions of low to medium-threat incidents and freeing up the NCSC to focus on the most critical attacks.

AI-powered threat detection

The NCSC, Accenture, and Cloudflare successfully transitioned over 8 million UK public sector users to a new, secure internet platform without disrupting critical operations, leveraging advanced AI for real-time threat detection and extensive communication to ensure readiness across more than 1000 organizations.

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The NCSC, Accenture, and Cloudflare worked as a unified team to integrate and implement the new platform.

The team architected data flows to ensure seamless data transmission, and to ensure successful data transfer for the new platform.

The NCSC and Accenture prepared public sector employees for the transition to the new platform.

The team facilitated extensive communications across the more than 1000 impacted public sector organizations, ensuring they were ready to manage any temporary disruptions to internet service.

The team then executed the program’s most crucial task: cutting over the entire UK public sector's internet access.

They shifted to the new platform in a single migration, successfully transitioning more than 8 million end users with no disruption to critical operations or services.

PDNS acts as a real-time allow/block system, ensuring individuals reach only intended websites.

The system is bolstered by Cloudflare’s advanced AI neural networks—which analyze 20% of the internet every second to provide near real-time threat detection—and 30+ threat intelligence providers that continuously identify malicious domains, delivering real-time defense capabilities. The system also understands trends and provides insights to help the NCSC better understand and mitigate cyber threats.

Cyber resilience for a safer future

In addition to blocking over 350 million cyber threats per month, the upgraded PDNS system prevents average annual losses of at least £59M.

It’s also endlessly scalable, allowing the NCSC to more rapidly onboard new organizations with the highest level of protection.

Now, PDNS stands ready to manage trillions of queries a year – paving the way for a safer, more resilient digital future and ensuring that UK remains the safest place to live, work, and do business.

£59M

Annual loss prevention

Meet the team

James Slessor

Managing Director – Public Safety, Global Lead

LinkedIn

Freha Arshad

Managing Director

LinkedIn

Louis Goddard-Stark

Senior Manager

LinkedIn