Security Operations Centre (SOC)

The National Physical Laboratory [NPL] requirement is to implement a 24x7 Security Operations Centre (SOC). It would enable NPL to gain 24x7 visibility over potential security threats in its environment and respond to them in a timely manner as per severity and agreed SLA. Currently, NPL does not have out of hours capability to respond to security alerts/incidents which leaves it vulnerable to security threats coming in out of hours, which in turn can have a significant impact on the availability of NPL systems if we are hit by a determined cyber threat actor, especially at this time where UK government organisations are at a higher alert status. NPL’s intention is to find a service provider that could supply several services which would fill the gap left from having a lack of resources (Senior Engineers and Architect), and who could function as part of an extended virtual team. Services required for SOC will be focused on NPL’s M365 E5 licensing stack, including handling Defender EDR capabilities, SIEM service, threat hunting, compliance reporting, cloud security baselining, vulnerability assessments, phishing trends, dark web monitoring and technical security advisory. The contract will initially be for a period of three years with the possibility of extending it by two further periods of one year each (3 + 1+ 1), following satisfactory performance of the supplier and at the sole discretion of NPL.