The Scottish Government has published new strategic plans for the Scottish Cyber Coordination Centre (SC3) covering up to 2027, with the centre described as a focal point for Scotland’s cybersecurity and digital resilience in the public sector, providing services to help protect against and respond to-cyber attacks.

First announced in 2022, with £1.5 million in funding, the goal of the SC3 was stated as boosting the country’s ability to prevent and combat growing cyber threats, and “strengthen Scotland’s resilience” to withstand the highest level of cyber incident.

The new three-year strategic plan outlines the creation of a ‘cyber-observatory’, which will act as a platform for storing and processing cybersecurity indicators from all of Scotland’s public sector organisations, alongside a  ‘Cyber Resilience Early Warning’ system that can quickly provide operational information to specific public sector organisations for proactive cyber protection to be put in place.

Intelligence collected by SC3 will help organisations in the public sector strengthen their defences by identifying vulnerabilities and improving their protection against future cyber-attacks, as well as providing real-time analysis of potential cyber-threats.

Several core partner organisations, including Police Scotland, NHS National Services Scotland, the Local Government Digital Office and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), are noted within the plans as essential to providing input and advice.

As part of the mission statement for the centre, the plans state that: “As Scotland embraces and benefits from digital transformation, it also faces a serious and evolving cyber threat and risk landscape as a result. 

“Following on from several significant cyber-attacks on Scottish Public Sector organisations, Ministers announced that as a matter of urgency they were bringing forward proposals for the establishment of a recognised, authoritative, and collaborative function to combat the accelerating cyber-threat.”

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As part of Scotland’s cyber resilience strategy, the SC3 will work alongside the UK Government’s National Cyber Security Centre and the already established CyberScotland Portal, responding to new technologies and adopting evolving strategies for defence specific to Scotland.

Last week, the Digital Office for Scottish Local Government announced it was working on a project with Scotland Excel to develop a singular cybersecurity framework for councils to contact Security Operations Centre services, aiming to provide cybersecurity support to local councils which may struggle with the onslaught of cyber-attack.