NCSC enters new partnership for PDNS delivery

Following a fair and competitive tender process, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is announcing a change of partnership in the delivery of its Protective Domain Name System (PDNS) service.

A three-year contract has been awarded to Cloudflare Inc. (NYSE: NET), the connectivity cloud company which will implement the NCSC’s PDNS service from September 2024 in collaboration with the services provider Accenture.

Bids were rigorously assessed by the NCSC to ensure that the partnership met the required technical standards as well as offering the best value for the British taxpayer.

NCSC’s PDNS service – one of its widely deployed Active Cyber Defence capabilities (ACD) – was launched in 2017 to hamper the use of DNS for malware distribution and operation within UK public services.

Since it was stood up seven years ago, PDNS has resolved over 2.5 trillion DNS queries and prevented access to 1.5m malicious domains. Today, PDNS effectively protects over 1,400 UK organisations in central government, local government, healthcare, emergency services and beyond, preventing average annual losses of at least £59M.

NCSC Director of National Resilience and Future Technology Jonathon Ellison said:

“As a core capability in the ACD toolkit, our PDNS service does vital work to make the UK public sector measurably safer from cyber attacks and help raise the cyber resilience bar across the nation.

“We’re excited about the next phase in delivering this essential service as we build on its significant successes and continue to protect the services that people depend on.”

PDNS was created by the NCSC and previously implemented by Nominet, which will continue to deliver the service until September 2024.