Digital Transformation Consulting

In response to a significant rise in cyber-attacks in the UK, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) faced the challenge of enhancing its Protective Domain Name Service (PDNS) to better protect public sector organizations from increasingly sophisticated threats. In 2024, incidents of cyber breaches had tripled compared to the previous year, affecting half of UK businesses and a third of charities. The existing PDNS was effective but needed to evolve to address the growing threat landscape, particularly against low to medium severity attacks that could disrupt operations and drain resources.

To tackle these issues, the NCSC partnered with Accenture and Cloudflare to develop a scalable and agile PDNS platform. This new system was designed to provide robust threat detection and protection, specifically targeting vulnerabilities in the internet's domain name system (DNS). The collaboration aimed to filter out billions of low to medium severity risks, allowing security teams within public sector organizations to concentrate on more critical threats.

The implementation of the new PDNS platform was a significant success, with over 8 million UK public sector users transitioned to the secure internet platform without any disruption to critical operations. This was achieved through advanced AI for real-time threat detection and extensive communication efforts across more than 1,000 organizations to prepare them for the transition. The system now blocks over 350 million cyber threats each month and is capable of preventing average annual losses of at least £59 million. Additionally, the PDNS is designed to be endlessly scalable, enabling the NCSC to onboard new organizations rapidly while maintaining high levels of protection. This initiative not only enhances the safety of digital operations but also positions the UK as a safer place for individuals and businesses in the digital landscape.