Physical and Personnel Security Assessment for UK Telecoms

The UK’s public telecommunications networks are a critical national infrastructure (CNI) subsector, underpinning the functioning of every other CNI sector, the digital economy, and essential public services, for which the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) is the lead government department. Their continued availability, integrity and confidentiality are fundamental to national security, economic resilience, and the everyday lives of UK citizens and businesses. Telecoms operators manage complex, large-scale, geographically distributed systems, including exchanges, data centres, transmission sites and access network assets , which are increasingly attractive targets for hostile state and state-aligned actors seeking to disrupt, degrade or exploit UK infrastructure. Physical compromise and insider threat are significant attack vectors that hostile actors could seek to exploit. Strengthening physical and personnel security across the sector is therefore a priority area of work for DCMS. This Request for Information (RFI) is issued solely for preliminary market engagement purposes and does not constitute a call for competition, tender or contract opportunity. The Authority is seeking information to better understand market capability, capacity, security accreditation requirements and delivery approaches. Participation in this RFI will not confer any advantage or disadvantage in any future procurement process. DSIT is exploring options for obtaining specialist support to undertake a physical and personnel security assessment of UK public telecommunications networks and services. We are seeking engagement from accredited security consultancy firms to conduct a sector-level physical and personnel security assessment of UK public telecoms networks and services. This should include assessment of current vulnerabilities and potential threat vectors, and set out a prioritised list of recommended mitigations for operators to reduce the risk of security comp