Turning Strategy into Action: ‘Defend as One’ with Cyware

The UK's public sector faces a growing tide of sophisticated cyber threats that target critical infrastructure, public services, and citizen data. From ransomware attacks on councils to phishing campaigns aimed at government agencies, the frequency and impact of cyber incidents are escalating. 

In response, the UK Government has taken a major step through its Cyber Security Strategy 2022-2030, calling for a shift from fragmented defences to a cohesive, intelligence-driven national cyber posture. At the heart of this strategy is the ‘Defend as One’ approach, a call to government organisations and departments to become a unified cyber security force capable of defending collectively and responding proactively.

Urgent Challenges Facing the UK Public Sector

Despite significant investments in national cybersecurity, the UK public sector continues to face several critical challenges in operationalising threat intelligence and achieving cohesive cyber defence. Key barriers to effective cyber defence include:

• Fragmented Intelligence Sharing across Government Organisations: Disjointed intelligence flows between organisations and departments create dangerous blind spots. Without a unified threat intelligence sharing framework, threats often go undetected until damage is done, leaving the broader public sector exposed and isolated.
• Limited Visibility and Resource Constraints: Government entities frequently operate with insufficient tools, personnel, and access to curated threat intelligence needed to detect and respond to threats proactively. This gap in resources creates vulnerabilities that sophisticated threat actors are increasingly equipped to exploit.
• Manual Workflows and Lack of Automation: Reliance on manual processes for threat detection, enrichment, and response drastically slows down critical decision-making, resulting in delayed responses, increased analyst fatigue, and missed opportunities to contain threats early in their lifecycle.
• Inconsistent Cyber Maturity and Technology Silos: With varying levels of cyber readiness and fragmented IT ecosystems, government organisations struggle to collaborate effectively. These disparities prevent seamless threat detection, coordinated response, and collective resilience against evolving threats.

The UK Government aims to address these challenges by breaking down silos, unifying cyber operations, and embracing a 'Defend as One' approach with real-time threat intelligence sharing and automated response capabilities. 

What is the ‘Defend as One’ Strategy?

The 'Defend as One' strategy serves as a central pillar of the UK Government Cyber Security Strategy 2022-2030. Its core objective is to treat the government as one single cyber enterprise rather than a collection of isolated organisations and departments. This unified stance ensures collective resilience, faster response, and a shared understanding of threats.

This strategy integrates into the broader National Cyber Strategy 2022-2030, which aims to build a cyber-resilient nation through collaboration, innovation, and smarter risk management across all sectors. It recognises the need for disparate government organisations to come together as one to “present a defensive force disproportionately more powerful than the sum of its parts.”  

The strategy’s pillars are underpinned by five objectives. These set the dimensions of what needs to be considered with regard to cyber resilience, providing a consistent framework and common language that can be applied to the whole of government. 

1. Manage cyber security risk through governance, accountability, and controls.
2. Protect against cyber attack using proportionate, scalable security measures.
3. Detect cyber security events via continuous system and network monitoring.
4. Minimise the impact of cyber security incidents with swift response and containment.
5. Develop the right cyber security skills, knowledge and culture across all professional domains.

How the Strategy Will Change the UK Cyber Landscape

The implementation of ‘Defend as One’ will drive a paradigm shift in how cybersecurity is managed across the public sector. Key changes include:

• Improved Coordination: Real-time collaboration and information exchange between organisations, departments, and local government bodies will dramatically reduce intelligence gaps and enable more effective threat assessment and management.
• Faster Incident Response: Centralised threat visibility and streamlined workflows will enable rapid response to emerging threats, potentially reducing the impact and cost of cyber incidents.
• Elevated Cyber Maturity: Consistent implementation of standards and frameworks will raise the overall cyber posture of public entities regardless of their size or resources.
• Protection of National Services: Stronger, intelligence-driven defence will safeguard the UK's most critical public sector infrastructure and services relied upon by citizens.

To bring the ‘Defend as One’ vision to life, the UK Government is mandating several foundational requirements, such as:

• Adoption of the NCSC’s Cyber Assessment Framework (CAF) for a consistent approach to assess and improve cyber resilience.
• Central government departments must undergo regular audits and reviews to provide independent assurance of their cyber posture.
• Focus on investing in scalable and interoperable cyber defence services to enable shared cyber capabilities across government entities.
• Creation of the Government Cyber Coordination Centre (GCCC) that will act as a centralised hub for threat coordination and incident response.
• Use of Active Cyber Defence (ACD) Tools as part of proactive defence measures to automatically block and neutralise threats.

To meet these new mandates, public sector organisations will require:

• Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs): To aggregate, analyse, and share threat intelligence in real time.
• Automation and Orchestration Tools: To drive faster incident resolution through automated playbooks.
• Vulnerability and Compliance Management Tools: To assess and report against CAF requirements effectively.
• Secure Collaboration Systems: Enabling cross-department and external partner threat information sharing.

How Cyware Supports ‘Defend as One’ Cyber Security Strategy

The UK Government Cyber Security Strategy emphasises two strategic pillars: building greater cyber resilience across all government organisations and working together to ‘Defend as One.’ Achieving these goals requires integrated action across government organisations, enhanced threat intelligence sharing, and adoption of modern technologies that enable swift, precise cyber defence.

Cyware’s platform is purpose-built to help operationalise this vision by delivering unified threat visibility, secure real-time collaboration, and automated response capabilities. By combining intelligence, automation, and collaboration, Cyware empowers government organisations to shift from fragmented, reactive cybersecurity approaches to a proactive, collective defence model.

Unified Threat Intel Management 

Cyware’s Threat Intelligence Platform manages the entire threat intelligence lifecycle from ingestion and enrichment to operationalisation and dissemination. Supporting Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI), Attack Surface Management, and Digital Risk Protection, it delivers a unified view of threats targeting government assets. Intelligence is aggregated from multiple internal and external sources and correlated with known adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), providing a rich, contextual understanding of the threat landscape. This comprehensive visibility breaks down organisational silos and enables government organisations to act on timely, actionable intelligence that improves threat prevention, detection, and response.

Real-Time Threat Sharing and Collaboration

Secure, real-time collaboration across government organisations and departments, trusted industry peers, and information-sharing communities such as ISACs and NCSC is critical to the ‘Defend as One’ strategy. Cyware’s collaboration platform enables government organisations to share threat intelligence, indicators of compromise (IOCs), incident reports, and response strategies within structured communities of trust. With role-based access controls and governance policies, sensitive information is shared securely and only with authorised participants. This capability fosters a collective defence ecosystem where knowledge and response strategies are shared seamlessly to outpace threat actors.

Hyper-Orchestration and Security Automation 

To enhance cyber resilience and respond to threats with agility, Cyware provides intelligence-driven hyper orchestration and automation. Using no-code or low-code playbooks, security teams can automate critical processes such as threat detection, enrichment, triage, and incident response. These workflows integrate with existing security tools such as SIEMs, SOARs, and endpoint solutions to enable real-time, coordinated actions across systems and teams. By eliminating manual bottlenecks and standardising response procedures, Cyware significantly reduces time to action and improves the accuracy and speed of incident handling, supporting the government’s resilience and capability-building objectives.

Cyware’s integrated platform empowers government organisations to transform their cybersecurity posture in line with the UK’s ‘Defend as One’ strategy, fostering collaboration, increasing resilience, and turning intelligence into decisive action.

In Essence

The ‘Defend as One’ strategy represents a major evolution in the UK Government’s approach to cybersecurity. Its success relies on combining policy, technology, automation, and collaboration across all government organisations and departments.

As cyber threats grow more sophisticated, the public sector must shift from fragmented defences to a unified security ecosystem. This requires practical implementation of platforms that enable seamless intelligence sharing, automated responses, and coordinated defence at scale.

Working with a technology partner who has delivered this at scale to other nations, will accelerate the benefits of stronger national resilience, reduced incident impact, and better protection of critical services. By adopting the right technology and collaborative methods, the UK public sector can turn this strategy into a secure reality for government organisations and citizens alike.

​​To learn more about how Cyware can support your organisation's journey toward collaborative cyber defence, request a demo today.