Public sector

Protect citizen services and public trust

Guidance for municipalities, departments, schools, public entities and service providers working with citizen records, grants, permits, utilities and essential operations.

First actions

Public service resilience

Prioritise systems where disruption affects communities directly or exposes sensitive citizen records.

Identify essential services

List digital dependencies for payments, billing, permits, school administration, clinics and public communications.

Control privileged access

Use named admin accounts, MFA, quarterly access reviews and strict contractor offboarding.

Protect citizen records

Limit exports, monitor shared folders and document POPIA breach assessment responsibilities.

Rehearse incident coordination

Include communications, legal, service owners, procurement, suppliers and Cybersecurity Hub contact paths.

Sample guidance

Operational focus areas

Municipal systems

Secure revenue and billing

Review access to billing platforms, payment files and customer records. Monitor unusual exports and privilege changes.

Schools

Protect learner information

Separate staff and learner accounts, control cloud sharing and avoid sending IDs or marks in unprotected spreadsheets.

Procurement

Reduce tender fraud risk

Publish clear official channels, verify supplier changes and warn bidders about fake tender documents and payment requests.

Continuity

Keep public notices available

Prepare alternate communication routes for outages, defacements or social media account compromise.

Checklist

Service-owner review

  • Confirm each critical service has a named business and technical owner.
  • Review admin and supplier accounts for billing, HR and citizen-data platforms.
  • Check backups include configuration, databases and document repositories.
  • Test the incident contact list after hours.
  • Verify public messaging templates for cyber incidents and service outages.

Resources

Public-service readiness worksheets

Web form

Cyber incident intake and triage

Summarise service disruption, data exposure, fraud indicators, evidence and reporting routes.

 Form + export

Evidence preservation checklist

Index screenshots, headers, logs, payment references, contact details and chain-of-custody notes.

 Web form

POPIA security compromise assessment

Assess citizen data exposure, notification recommendations, accountable owners and deadline tracking.

 Excel checklist

Public-sector service-owner review

Score each critical service for ownership, backups, supplier access, contacts and messaging readiness.

 Excel register

Citizen-data access review

Track exports, shared folders, supplier accounts, privilege changes and cleanup actions.