The Scottish Housing Regulator is strengthening the cyber resilience of the secure password-protected area that social landlords use to submit data returns and notifiable events.
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) has recently been introduced as a requirement of the Cyber Essentials Plus scheme and the Regulator is now implementing this for its social landlord portal, which allows landlords to submit information to the Regulator. This will strengthen social landlords’ cyber resilience and help those that are working to achieve Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation. The Regulator is contacting landlords directly with more information.
The Regulator is also establishing a Landlord Portal User Group for users of the portal. The purpose of the group is to be a technical forum to routinely gather feedback so that the Regulator can continuously improve the user experience of the portal and the forms software that landlords use to submit data.
Robert Laley, Assistant Director of Digital said:
“We’ve seen increasing levels of cyber threat in the last couple of years against websites in the public and private sectors. Ensuring robust measures of cyber resilience has never been so important. We achieved Cyber Essentials Plus re-accreditation in February 2023 – this gives additional assurance that our systems are configured and managed securely. Adding MFA to the portal further improves our cyber resilience and ensures that we are protecting our users’ data. Establishing the Landlord Portal User Group will help us to focus on user experience as we continuously improve the systems that landlords use to submit data to us.”
Notes to editors
- The Scottish Housing Regulator was established on 1 April 2011 under the Housing (Scotland) Act 2010. Its objective is to safeguard and promote the interests of tenants and others who use local authority and RSL housing services. The Regulator operates independently of Scottish Ministers and is accountable directly to the Scottish Parliament. It assumed its full regulatory responsibilities on 1 April 2012. The Regulator consists of the Chair and eight Board members. More information about the Regulator can be found on its website at housingregulator.gov.scot
- SHR sets out how it regulates social landlords in its published framework – Regulation of Social Housing in Scotland.
- Cyber Essentials is an effective, Government backed scheme that helps to protect organisations, whatever their size, against a range of the most common cyber attacks. Cyber Essentials Plus includes a technical verification of the controls that are in place.