The new UK cyber security and resilience bill targets supplier risk
Cyberattacks are evolving fast, faster than most legacy systems or regulatory bodies can keep up with. In the UK, the government is finally doing something useful in this space. The new Cyber Security and Resilience Bill takes a direct shot at one of the most overlooked issues in cybersecurity: supply chain risk. Specifically, it sets regulatory expectations for over 900 managed service providers that support both public and private sector systems. These are the companies sitting just outside the core of critical infrastructure, but they hold the keys to everything.
This isn’t a compliance form you can file and forget. You’re looking at a widening threat landscape where attackers don’t go through the front door, they find the third-party IT team running updates for hospitals or the small MSP that hosts cloud services for power grid operators. That’s how systems get compromised at scale. This Bill is an indication that regulators are no longer ignoring this weak link, and honestly, it’s overdue.
The expectation here is clarity of responsibility. If your company touches critical national services, directly or via contract, you’re being asked to step up. Regulations now include transparency on how you manage intrusion detection, vulnerability remediation, and incident reporting. If your partner drops the ball, your entire ecosystem is exposed. You don’t have to like the rules, but you definitely ignore them at your own expense.
And let’s be clear, this doesn’t stop at checking boxes. Tim Pfaelzer, SVP and GM at Veeam (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), nailed it when he said this Bill is a call for collaboration, not just compliance. The best companies won’t wait to be told how to act. They’ll lead. They’ll look at their own vendor dependencies, run continuous audit systems, and share real-time metrics on risk. That’s how market leaders stay ahead, by making resilience their default setting, not a quarterly report line item.
This is the right direction. Introduce strong, enforceable rules. Hold suppliers accountable. Build ecosystems that aren’t fragile by design. We’re not seeing future problems, we’re responding to current threats.
The bill reinforces the importance of securing third- and fourth-party vendors to protect vital infrastructure
Most companies underestimate how exposed they are through third parties. You might protect your own perimeter, firewalls, authentication, compliance, but the real question is: how secure are your vendors, and theirs?
The UK’s Cyber Security and Resilience Bill forces this question into strategy meetings. It’s not optional anymore. If your suppliers manage IT systems for healthcare, utilities, or transport, if they store citizen data or handle customer records, they’re now part of critical infrastructure. That matters. Threat actors aren’t wasting time on the hard targets. They’re focusing on the unprepared vendors with weak detection, minimal audits, and poor response times.
Mike Smith, Partner – Security at TXP, made it clear: the industry’s attack surface has grown dramatically because too many suppliers fail to hold the line. Support services, offsite IT desks, cloud-based infrastructure, all of it is vulnerable. When these secondary services break, the damage hits primary systems. If failure leads to data loss, service outages, or privacy violations, contracts will be at risk. That’s not hypothetical. It’s happening now.
The Bill doesn’t just demand tighter risk controls. It expects measurable proof. Companies need to show they’re running regular penetration testing, conducting red team exercises, and implementing real-time reporting protocols. This level of readiness changes the game. It pushes business leaders to align their procurement decisions with cybersecurity posture, not just pricing and speed.
For C-suite executives, this is also an operational challenge. You can’t scale blindly. Every new vendor deal now needs a lens of cyber resilience. It’s not just about securing the contract, it’s about being able to defend it. Boards will need to start treating vendor security as a strategic asset, not a technical side note.
Ignore third- and fourth-party risks today, and you’re signing up for direct consequences tomorrow. This legislation shows where the UK is heading, and if you’re not elevating these standards across your ecosystem, your business model may not keep pace.
The bill calls for a transformation of identity and access management practices across critical infrastructure systems
Access control is broken in a lot of organizations. They’re relying on outdated systems, static credentials, shared VPNs, lingering SSH keys. These methods don’t scale, and they’re not built to withstand today’s level of threat. The UK’s Cyber Security and Resilience Bill addresses this head-on by pushing companies to rethink how they manage identity and access, especially in critical environments.
This isn’t just about audit readiness. It’s about eliminating dead weight, manual processes, security gaps, credentials that never expire. The Bill encourages companies to move toward identity-based access with just-in-time provisioning. That approach gives teams what they need when they need it, shuts off access when work is done, and builds stronger barriers around sensitive systems.
For executive teams, it’s an opportunity to simplify infrastructure and harden security at the same time. Fewer static credentials means fewer leaks. Cleaner audits mean less wasted energy dealing with compliance patchwork. There’s less room for human error when authentication is tied directly to task-based access and immutable identity metadata. And with AI integration on the rise, having a scalable and precise control plane over who accesses what, and when, isn’t a nice-to-have anymore. It’s foundational.
Ev Kontsevoy, CEO at Teleport, made the point clearly: the Bill isn’t just another compliance exercise. It’s a practical driver for companies to drop legacy architecture that creates risk and switch to workflows that are tighter, faster, and built for actual security outcomes. The benefits aren’t just regulatory, they’re operational. Greater speed, cleaner logs, reduced credential misuse.
If you’re leading a company that relies on technical infrastructure, this affects you directly. Identity-based models make your teams faster and your footprint more defensible. Moving in this direction won’t just satisfy the Bill’s requirements, it will make your organization more resilient in a threat environment that’s only getting noisier.
Main highlights
- Strengthen oversight of managed service providers: The UK Cyber Security and Resilience Bill imposes new regulatory requirements on over 900 MSPs, signaling a shift toward holding indirect infrastructure suppliers accountable. Leaders should ensure suppliers meet evolving national cyber standards or risk operational and contractual fallout.
- Evaluate and secure the full supply chain: As regulators target third- and fourth-party vulnerabilities, executives must go beyond surface-level checks. Vendor relationships should now include proactive audits, clear security benchmarks, and structured reporting to avoid becoming a single point of failure.
- Modernize access control systems: The Bill pushes companies to move away from legacy credentials and adopt identity-based, just-in-time access models. Leaders should prioritize these upgrades to reduce breach risks, trim audit overhead, and build infrastructure that scales with security, not against it.
