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This guideline defines the type of cyber and information security incidents which are required to be reported for monitoring and evaluation purposes and the applicable categories

This document provides detailed guidance to support the National Community Security Policy (NCSP) system development (Secure by Design SbD) standard. Secure by Design as a methodology has been selected to ensure that a repeatable, structured, and consistent approach to the secure delivery of solutions across policing is achieved, as well as ensuring that risks are managed within risk appetite. 

This Standard specifies the minimum requirements regarding technical security management. It describes the requirements to enable members of the community of trust to build and operate an effective technical security infrastructure, applying security architecture principles and integrating technical security solutions, such as malware protection, intrusion detection and cryptography

This standard aims to ensure that physical assets are acquired securely, configured properly, maintained regularly, and disposed of safely and securely, while ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the information they handle. By adopting this standard, organisations can ensure that they are protecting their assets against potential threats, mitigating risks, and complying with regulatory requirements.

This guideline covers recommendations for the commissioning and use of internet connections, with a specific focus on the requirements of the Law Enforcement Community Network (LECN).

This standard defines the requirements to implement Information Management as mandated in the National Community Security Policy. It encompasses the management of policing information within the OFFICIAL tier of the Government Security Classification model

This guideline provides the policing community with advice on the use of communication software such as e-conferencing.

This Standard specifies the minimum requirements regarding cyber threat and incident processes and actions. It aims to provide members of the policing community with clear direction to manage incidents associated with cyber-attacks and cyber incidents

This standard sets out the Cryptographic Algorithms to be used within policing. A list of algorithms is provided initially followed by applications and the associated cryptography required for each application. Finally the standard provides some commentary on the emerging cryptography for post quantum computing and lightweight computing.

This standard adheres to the National Policing Community Security Policy Framework and is a suitable reference for community members, notably those who build and implement IT systems on behalf of national policing.

This standard is intended to guide the reader through the process of securely managing business applications, both internally developed and externally sourced, regardless of whether locally installed or cloud based. Centred around stocktaking, documenting and actively managing those applications, this standard should enable the visibility of all business utilised applications, ensuring all are appropriately assessed for risk, appropriately controlled, and managed in such a way as to not introduce cyber security risk going forward.

This document provides all National Policing and its partners with a clear set of security architectural principles, which are the foundation to build, design and implement secure solutions.

On the 25th May 2018 the Data Protection Act 2018 was implemented by the UK as the General Data Protection Regulation also known as GDPR. It controls how personal information is captured and used by organisations and the government.

Everyone responsible for using personal data has to follow strict rules called ‘data protection principles’ and must ensure that the information they obtain is for a lawful purpose, used fairly and must be transparent about its intended purpose of usage and used explicitly for that purpose only.

Data should also not be kept for more than is necessary, and whilst it is kept, should be kept up to date and handled and secured in a way that does not compromise its protection from unauthorised processing, loss of theft of data.  

It is important to note that there is stronger legal protection for more sensitive information such as race, health, sex life, orientation, ethnic background. There are separate safeguards for personal data relating to criminal convictions and offences.

Under the Data Protection Act 2018, an individual has the right to find out what information the government and other organisations holds about them and this ideally should be provided to the individual within 1 month.  

To make a complaint about the misuse of personal information or lack of security it should be made to the organisation, following their response the complaint can also be made to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

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The Equality Act 2010 replaced previous anti-discrimination laws with a single Act. It protected people from discrimination, age discrimination and public sector Equality Duty, sets out the different ways in which the maltreatment of an individual can be unlawful.

The Equality Act 2010 provides a basic framework of protection against direct and indirect discrimination, harassment and victimisation in services and public functions, work, education, associations and transport, protection against indirect discrimination to disability, allowing claims for direct gender pay discrimination where there is no actual comparator and much more.

Before the Act came into force there were several pieces of legislation to cover discrimination, including:

• Sex Discrimination Act 1975

• Race Relations Act 1976

• Disability Discrimination Act 1995

Complaints made about unlawful treatment, that happened after the 1st October 2010, the Equality Act will apply. However if was before this date, then the legislation that was in force at the time will apply.

The Equality Act 2010 includes provisions that ban age discrimination against adults in the provision of services and public functions. It also includes the public sector Equality Duty public bodies have to consider all individuals when carrying out their day-to-day work – in shaping policy, in delivering services and in relation to their own employees.

The regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 relates to the interception, acquisition and disclosure of data relating to communications, the carrying out of surveillance, the use of covert human intelligence sources and the acquisition of the means by which electronic data protected by encryption or passwords may be decrypted or accessed.

There are three main ways of surveillance and covert human intelligence

1. direct surveillance

2. intrusive surveillance

3. use of covert human intelligence sources

Non-intrusive covert surveillance can be undertaken for a specific investigation, operation or purpose. Its result is to obtain private information about a person (whether or not one specifically identified for the purposes of the investigation or operation)

Intrusive surveillance is carried out either in a residential premises or private vehicle; and involves the presence of an individual on the premises or in the vehicle or is carried out by means of a surveillance device.

Human intelligence source is inducing, asking or assisting a person to obtain information by means of the conduct of such a source. This is achieved by establishing a personal or other relationship with a person for the covert purpose and covertly discloses information obtained by the use of such a relationship, or as a consequence of the existence of such a relationship.

The Criminal Procedure and Investigations Code of Practice applies in respect of criminal investigations conducted by police. A criminal investigation can be defined an investigation conducted by police officers with a view to it being ascertained whether a person should be charged with an offence, or whether a person charged with an offence is guilty of it. 

This document sets out the manner in which police officers are to record, retain and reveal to the prosecutor material obtained in a criminal investigation.

The roles and responsibilities within a criminal investigation can vary. The functions of the investigator, the officer in charge of an investigation and the disclosure officer are separate. The amount of persons attached to this case to fulfil the above roles will depend on the complexity of the case and the administrative arrangements within each police force. Commonly, where there are more than one person undertaking the roles, close consultation between them is essential to the effective performance of the duties imposed by this code. 


Persons other than police officers who are charged with the duty of conducting an investigation as defined in the Act are to have regard to the relevant provisions of the code, and should take these into account in applying their own operating procedures. 


Protection of Freedoms Act 2012: DNA and fingerprint provisions was introduced in October 2013 to cover the retention of DNA and fingerprints where it was ruled in the European Court in the case of S and Marper v UK that the blanket retention of DNA profiles taken from innocent people posed a disproportionate interference with the right to private life.

The protection of Freedoms Act strikes a balance between protecting the freedoms of those who are innocent of any offence whilst ensuring that the police continue to have the capability to protect the public and bring criminals to justice. 

A DNA sample is an individual’s biological material, containing all of their genetic information. The act requires all DNA samples to be destroyed within 6 months of being taken. This allows sufficient time for the sample to be analysed. The only exception to this is if the sample is required for use as evidence in court, in which case it may be retained for the duration of the proceedings.

Fingerprints are usually scanned electronically from the individual in custody and the images stored on IDENT1, the national fingerprint database.

For Scotland, the legal acquisition, retention, weeding and use of DNA and Fingerprint data is outlined in Sections 18 to 19C of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/46/part/II/crossheading/prints-and-samples”

Public sector organisations need to think about accessibility at every stage and ensure they meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) design principles. The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018 are now active and applicable to all public sector organisations, including policing, and this guidance has been created to support organisations meeting the requirements for all new and existing websites or applications.

The guidance is split into several sections:

1. Decide how to check the accessibility problems on your website or mobile app
2. Make a plan to fix any accessibility problems
3. Publish your accessibility statement
4. Make sure new features are accessible

The main theme throughout is that accessibility should be considered on how people with impairments to their sight, hearing, movement, memory or thinking may use the website/app. Regular tests should be carried out from the point code writing even through the public beta stage and at every time a new feature is added.

The best way to meet accessibility requirements is to:

• think about accessibility requirements from the commencement

• run accessibility tests regularly throughout development

• get a formal accessibility audit before you go into public beta

• make sure the service works with the most common assistive technologies - screen readers or speech recognition software

• test the service with disabled users and with older users

Legislation link: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2018/852/contents/made

Step 3 from the 10 steps to Cyber Security covers asset management, ensuring you know what data and systems you manage, and what business need they support.

Asset management encompasses the way you can establish and maintain the required knowledge of your assets. Over time, systems generally grow organically, and it can be hard to maintain an understanding of all the assets within your environment. Incidents can occur as the result of not fully understanding an environment, whether it is an unpatched service, an exposed cloud storage account or a mis-classified document. Ensuring you know about all of these assets is a fundamental precursor to being able to understand and address the resulting risks. Understanding when your systems will no longer be supported can help you to better plan for upgrades and replacements, to help avoid running vulnerable legacy systems.

This guidance gives practical advice on the secure development, procurement and deployment of generic applications.

There are three types of common security issues:

1. Secure data handling

2. Application hardening

3. Third party applications

This guidance is written main for risk assessors and application developers on how to minimise the loss of data from applications running on all devices handling sensitive data. Sensitive information should not be stored on devices when it's not required. If it must be stored on a device, a native data storage protection APIs (Application Programming Interface) available on the platform must be utilised. You must also ensure that the applications allows administrators to delete sensitive data from devices if they are compromised or lost and encrypt sensitive information when stored, protected by an authentication mechanism.

You must also securely implement cryptographic functions and store sensitive information securely, and hide it from the user until they have been authenticated and ensure that sessions timeout periodically and require the user or application to repeat the authentication process and where possible manage user accounts centrally.

ISO (the International Organisation for Standardisation) and IEC (the International Electrotechnical Commission) form the specialised system for worldwide standardisation. National bodies that are members of ISO or IEC participate in the development of International Standards through technical committees established by the respective organisation to deal with particular fields of technical activity. In the field of information technology, ISO and IEC have established a joint technical committee, ISO/IEC JTC 1.

The implementation of an information security management system is a strategic decision for an organisation that is influenced by the organisation’s needs and objectives, security requirements, the organisational processes and thus the International Standard has been setup to establish, implement, maintain and continually improve an information security management system.

The information security management system preserves the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information by applying a risk management process and gives confidence to interested parties that risks are adequately managed.

This International Standard specifies the requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining and continually improving an information security management system within the context of the organisation. This also includes requirements for the assessment and treatment of information security risks tailored to the needs of the organisation and is applicable to all organisations, irrespective of size and structure.