Cyber Security and Resilience Bill: CSRB Roadmap for 2026

Operational guidance only, not legal advice. For formal interpretation and compliance decisions, involve your legal and compliance teams.

If you run IT, security, or infrastructure in the UK, the Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill is set to become part of your day-to-day responsibilities. Introduced to Parliament on 12 November 2025, it is designed to update and strengthen the UK’s cyber resilience framework built around the Network and Information Systems (NIS) Regulations 2018.

You don’t need to memorise legislative wording. What you do need is a plan that leadership can understand, fund, and govern.

What is the CSRB?

The CSRB is intended to modernise the UK’s NIS-style approach to cyber resilience for the services and digital infrastructure organisations and citizens rely on every day.

For most IT and security teams, the direction of travel is clear. Expect a wider group of organisations to be brought into scope or pulled in through contractual requirements, tighter expectations around incident reporting, a stronger emphasis on resilience and recovery outcomes, and clearer regulatory oversight and enforcement.

Who is most likely to be impacted?

CSRB is likely to affect a broad set of organisations, but three groups should pay particularly close attention.

Organisations already regulated under NIS

If you’re already in scope under the NIS Regulations, treat CSRB as a higher bar. The operational impact tends to show up as more formal evidence requirements, sharper expectations around recovery capability, and closer scrutiny of how suppliers and dependencies are managed. Less emphasis on what you intend to do, and more focus on what you can prove you do.

Managed Service Providers (MSPs)

The Bill explicitly addresses “relevant managed service providers”. If you provide ongoing management, monitoring, administration, or security services, especially where you have privileged access or remote access, CSRB readiness is likely to become a baseline customer expectation, not just a compliance topic.

Even where an MSP isn’t directly regulated on day one, CSRB-style requirements often appear early via procurement questions, contract clauses, and renewal negotiations. Customers will want confidence that you can support resilience, collaborate during incidents, and help them meet reporting and recovery expectations.

Data centres and critical suppliers

The Bill intends to bring data centres into scope. Beyond that, CSRB-style requirements frequently spread through contracts even when an organisation is not directly regulated. That means suppliers may be asked to demonstrate resilience, incident collaboration, and recoverability to win or retain business.

If your services sit on the critical path for customers, such as hosting, connectivity, managed platforms, backup services, or infrastructure support, assume that resilience evidence and operational readiness will become part of how you are evaluated.

What changes in practice (where the work really lands)

Most organisations experience CSRB through everyday operational demands rather than policy documents. The work usually concentrates in four areas.

Recovery becomes the headline outcome. Leadership will care less about your security stack and more about whether critical services can keep running, or be restored quickly and cleanly after an incident, including ransomware. This brings backup architecture, DR design, and recovery testing into the spotlight.

Reporting needs to be faster and more disciplined. The intent is quicker initial notification followed by a fuller report soon after. That only works when detection, triage, escalation, and evidence gathering are consistent and well rehearsed, particularly outside normal hours when incidents often become more difficult to manage.

Assurance becomes normal. More organisations will face more questions from regulators, customers, and auditors. Even if you are not directly in scope, you may still be expected to operate as if you are, because the requirements will be embedded into contracts, risk reviews, and supplier assessments.

Supply chain resilience is non-negotiable. It won’t be enough to say suppliers are approved. Organisations will need to show who is critical to service continuity, what obligations are included in contracts, and how supplier capability is validated in practice, not just on paper.

A simple CSRB roadmap you can run in 2026

You don’t need a huge programme to get started. You need a sequence that creates clarity and drives funded priorities.

1) Confirm your exposure

Start by answering three questions internally. Are you already in scope under NIS? Do you operate like an in-scope MSP? Are you a data centre operator or a critical supplier underpinning in-scope organisations?

If any answer is yes or probably, put CSRB on the 2026 risk and budget agenda now. If the answer is no, plan on seeing CSRB-style requirements appear through customer contracts anyway.

2) Define your critical services (not your servers)

Resilience becomes manageable when it is service-led. Pick a short list of business-critical services, the things the organisation cannot operate without. For each, capture the essentials: the key systems and platforms involved, the data that must be protected, the infrastructure it depends on, and the third parties in the chain.

Keep this mapping leadership-friendly. It should help decision makers understand where disruption hurts most and where investment reduces the most risk.

3) Baseline reality across four areas

A useful baseline is simple and honest. Can you recover? Can you detect and triage quickly? Can you prove readiness through testing and evidence? Are suppliers aligned with your resilience and incident processes?

Avoid overly complex scoring systems at this stage. Labels like Strong, Adequate, and Gap are often enough to drive decision making and prioritisation.

4) Fund a small set of high impact improvements

Most organisations will get the best results by selecting three to five priorities for 2026. These are typically where money and effort create the fastest risk reduction: modern backup and recovery protections, regular end-to-end recovery testing with documented outcomes, clearer incident playbooks and decision ownership, and stronger supplier obligations for resilience and collaboration.

This is also where CSRB becomes tangible. A funded plan with defined owners and measurable outcomes is far more valuable than a long list of aspirations.

5) Give leadership a one page view they can govern

Boards and executive teams need clarity, not detail. A good one page view answers the questions leadership actually cares about: are we in scope directly or indirectly, can we recover critical services, could we report a serious incident quickly and credibly, are key suppliers aligned, and what are the funded priorities for the next 12 to 24 months?

This is where readiness becomes governable. It turns CSRB from a regulatory concept into a managed programme.

How Covenco helps you become CSRB-ready

CSRB is a regulatory change, but delivery is operational: backup, recovery, testing, evidence, and supplier readiness.

Covenco supports UK organisations with recovery-first backup and disaster recovery across on-prem, cloud, and hybrid environments, including immutable and air-gapped approaches where appropriate. We run resilience testing programmes and produce evidence packs that translate technical outcomes into leadership ready proof. We also help define runbooks and operational readiness for recoveries and incident workflows so teams can act quickly under pressure without guesswork. Where internal teams are stretched, Covenco provides managed services support so resilience doesn’t rely on heroic effort.

FAQs

What’s the next key date for the Bill?

The next scheduled milestone is Second Reading in the House of Commons on Tuesday 6 January 2026.

When will CSRB take effect?

As of today, the Bill is still progressing through Parliament. The exact start date depends on when it completes the legislative process and how commencement is set. Some provisions can come into force later than others. Plan on the basis that requirements may land in stages, and avoid leaving readiness work until a final go live date is confirmed.

What incident reporting timelines should we plan for?

Plan for a two stage approach: a rapid initial notification followed by a fuller report soon after. Operationally, that means fast detection, clear thresholds for what is reportable, named decision owners, and evidence you can stand behind.

Will MSPs definitely be in scope?

The Bill targets relevant managed service providers, and whether that includes you depends on how your services are delivered. If you have privileged or remote access to customer environments, treat readiness as a serious requirement and confirm applicability with your advisers.

Are data centres included?

The Bill intends to bring data centres into scope. Even where a provider is not directly regulated, customers may still contractually require CSRB-style controls and evidence.

Turning CSRB from a risk into a plan

You don’t need panic. You need structure.

Confirm your exposure, define your critical services, baseline reality, fund a small set of high impact improvements, and give leadership a clear view they can govern. Do that in 2026, and you’ll be in a strong position as CSRB moves through Parliament and into real world expectations.

Get in touch with Covenco

If you want to turn CSRB readiness into a practical, measurable 2026 programme, Covenco can help. Speak to our team about a CSRB readiness review, resilience testing, and recovery-first backup and DR that stands up under real incident conditions.