Secure communications principles
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Guidance for risk owners and professionals assessing communications technologies for organisations, particularly government and public sector.
Adapted edition
- Document type
- Reference Guide
- Format
- DOCX
- Pages
- 5
- Language
- English
- Version
- 1.0
- Updated
- 2026-09-16
- Category
- Information security
- Licence
- Open Government Licence v3.0
Description
Guidance for risk owners and professionals assessing communications technologies for organisations, particularly government and public sector for organisational planning, review and training. NCSC guidance is advisory and should be applied to the organisation's own risks and obligations.
Contents
- How to use this guidance
- The NCSC's secure communication principles
- 1. Protect data in transit
- Is data protected against eavesdropping and tampering?
- Can participants confirm who they are communicating with?
- 2. Protect network nodes with access to sensitive data
- Are network nodes with access to un-encrypted data protected appropriately?
- Are network nodes that manage cryptographic key material protected appropriately?
- 3. Protect against unauthorised user access to the service
- Is user access to the service protected?
- Is the user's device appropriately protected?
- 4. Provision for secure audit of the service
- Does the service log security events?
- Do you require access to communications content for audit purposes?
- Is access to audit functionality and communications content restricted?
- 5. Allow administrators to securely manage users and systems
- Source links
Source and licence
National Cyber Security Centre
AttributionNational Cyber Security Centre, “Secure communications principles” (16 January 2020), reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
ChangesAdapted 16 September 2026: converted the official HTML article into neutral text-only DOCX and PDF editions. Preserved article headings, paragraphs, lists and plain-text source-link destinations; normalized web whitespace and typographic punctuation; omitted site navigation, topic and download cards, images, logos, scripts, styles and page furniture.
Version history
- v1.016/09/2026