16 January 2019

Protected against attack: the programme includes the creation of a National Management Centre to help safeguard police forces from cyber threats.

BT and Deloitte have been awarded contracts to help deliver the National Enabling Programmes (NEP) initiative for policing, including the National Management Centre (NMC) for Policing. The programmes aims help police and crime commissioners across England and Wales to buy and use ICT more effectively.

The £100m NEP will modernise and introduce greater consistency across the IT systems used by police forces. This will include the introduction of cloud-based services and improved cyber security technologies. At the same time, forces will maintain autonomy for local IT decision making and the control of their digital assets, while benefitting from the economies of scale of a national, centrally procured contract.

As the client delivery partner, Deloitte will lead the implementation of the overall programme. It will provide a range of services to assist forces in adopting the cloud platform, improve access management, and enhance their approach to cyber security.

The company will collaborate with BT to create the NMC for Policing which will provide round-the-clock monitoring capability for 43 forces. Through this nationally coordinated and locally delivered service, it’s claimed users will have access to a “centre of cyber excellence” that offers the ability to identify, manage and respond to internal and external cyber threats, while enhancing legislative compliance.

BT adds that the NMC will be based in one of its existing security operations centres. As well as protecting all forces from cyber attacks, the company says that it will keep sensitive data safe as applications are migrated to Microsoft Azure.