Whitehall’s finance agency has entered into a contract of at least two years, during which it will be provided with constant monitoring of potential risks and support with incident mitigation

HM Treasury has signed a six-figure deal for a round-the-clock service to support the identification and mitigation of cyberthreats.

On 24 March, the finance department entered into an initial two-year agreement with Nottingham-based tech supplier Littlefish, which has been contracted to provide a “managed detection and response service”.

The deal will require the firm to deliver a “24×7… service as part of a hybrid security operations centre using Microsoft Sentinel” technology, according to the text of the contract.

This service “takes over and provides a proactive and fit-for-purpose monitoring and alerting capability to monitor, assess, manage and minimise the likelihood of security incidents”.

The document specifies that Littlefish’s cyber offering takes Microsoft Defender for Endpoint “as its core component, and will deliver a centralised view of information security activity” across an organisation’s landscape of end-user devices.

Related content

• ‘There will always be a gap’ in government cyber, Whitehall chief says
• MoD signs £1.5m deal for ‘cyber adversary simulation’
• How GovAssure is bringing ‘rigour and objectivity’ to departments’ cyber credentials

The contract says that, having deployed a “solution bespoke to [the Treasury’s] environment and data sources”, the technology platform will be supplemented by the round-the-clock efforts of a “dedicated threat-hunting team [which] leverages intelligence feeds and reporting to not only alert upon attack… but also evaluate the adversary’s behavioural tactics, techniques and procedures”.

The department will be provided with monthly reports outlining security incidents, alerts and any resultant problems suffered during the period and offering “feedback on the service’s performance and effectiveness”.

The supplier and HM Treasury may also “periodically convene a governance board” to provide more detailed examination of cyber matters and the efficacy of the managed service.

In delivering the contracted services, Littlefish will be required to collaborate with two other suppliers: Wipro; and NTT Data.

The two-year deal is valued at £444,000 – a figure which could rise if the Treasury chooses to activate an optional extension of a further 12 months, which would take the agreement’s end date to March 2028. The contract was awarded by the G-Cloud 14 framework.