Protect · Threat Protection · Fixed-scope assessment
DDoS & Public Service Resilience
In January 2026 the NCSC warned that pro-Russian hacktivist groups were continuing to hit UK local government with denial-of-service attacks, and urged councils to strengthen their defences. This is politically motivated disruption, the most common form of what is often called cyber terrorism, and its targets are chosen by how easy they are to knock over. We test how your public services would hold up, then harden the edge so they stay available.
Talk to us about this
Who it is for
Councils, public bodies, emergency services, regulated firms, political parties and any organisation whose online services people rely on at moments of public attention.
What is included
- Assessment of DNS, content delivery, web application firewall and hosting against current hacktivist techniques
- Origin protection, so attackers cannot go around the edge
- Rate limiting and bot controls on the services that matter: payments, forms, search and sign-in
- A lightweight static fallback for critical public information
- Monitoring and alerting, so you know before your users tell you
- A runbook for the day it happens, including who to call
What you get
- A resilience report with a ranked hardening plan
- Hardened configuration, delivered by us or handed over
- A tested fallback and runbook
- A short exercise with your digital and communications teams
No one can promise that an attack will never cause disruption. The aim is that attacks are absorbed at the edge and that, if something does get through, you recover quickly with a plan already agreed.
Why Cipherer
- Principal-led. The person who scopes the work does the work, with no hand-off to a junior team.
- SC-cleared principal consultant (National Security Vetting), and a Cyber Essentials certified company.
- Seventeen years of delivery across government, healthcare, banking and Web3, including an organisation-wide cyber security programme for the Scottish Government.
- Security by design in everything we build and run, from a community website to a bank's data platform.
- One partner from advice to operation, based in Scotland and working across the UK.
Every engagement starts with a short call to agree scope, then a written proposal setting out deliverables, timeline and price.