Building cyber resilience across the next generation of policing

Police forces are balancing ageing infrastructure with cloud services, mobile devices and increasingly connected ways of working – all while facing tighter budgets and a growing cyber threat landscape. At the same time, many forces are exploring shared services and IT consolidation to reduce duplication and improve efficiency.

Ahead of The Emergency Tech Show, Tanium, a Microsoft Partner Pavilion exhibitor, shares how greater visibility across IT estates, automated remediation and closer integration with Microsoft’s security tools can help emergency services build a more resilient digital foundation.

What are the biggest technology and cyber security challenges facing policing today?

Police forces are managing a complex mix of legacy infrastructure and modern cloud environments, while also supporting mobile working and an expanding number of connected devices.

One of the biggest challenges is visibility. Many forces still operate separate tools, processes and security approaches, making it harder to maintain a consistent picture of their IT estate and respond quickly when something goes wrong.

Budgets also remain under pressure, so forces need to get more value from existing investments rather than continually adding new tools. As more organisations move towards shared services, reducing duplication across contracts, platforms and processes has become just as important as strengthening security.

Why does real-time visibility across IT assets matter so much for police forces?

You can’t secure or govern what you can’t see. Real-time visibility helps forces understand exactly what devices, software and systems are operating across their environment, making it easier to identify vulnerabilities, respond to incidents and maintain compliance.

That becomes even more important when forces share infrastructure or merge IT environments. Visibility needs to extend across multiple organisations, locations and legacy systems so that consolidation doesn’t simply create one larger estate with the same blind spots.

How can technology support IT consolidation while maintaining security and resilience?

Shared services create opportunities to reduce duplication, lower costs and apply more consistent security standards across forces. The key is having a common platform that provides visibility and control across the combined estate. Rather than each force running separate point solutions, a shared approach can reduce licensing, integration and management overheads while giving IT teams a single view of devices, policies and vulnerabilities.

Done well, consolidation doesn’t mean compromising on security. It creates a stronger operating model that is both more resilient and more cost effective.

How is automation helping forces move from detecting threats to fixing them?

Automation allows organisations to respond as soon as vulnerabilities are identified, rather than relying on manual intervention.

For example, policies can automatically trigger patching, isolate compromised devices or apply configuration changes when a security issue is detected. That helps reduce the workload on stretched IT teams and shortens the time between detection and remediation.

It’s particularly valuable in shared-service environments, where the same platform can enforce consistent security policies across devices whether they’re based in stations, in patrol vehicles or being used remotely.

What are you looking forward to discussing on the Microsoft Partner Pavilion?

We’re looking forward to talking to visitors about the practical challenges of modernising policing technology while making the most of existing investments.

On the Microsoft Partner Pavilion, we’ll be discussing how Tanium integrates with tools including Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Intune to give forces better visibility and control across their security environment, without replacing technology they already own.

We’ll also be exploring how AI is beginning to support cyber operations by prioritising risks, recommending remediation and helping automate routine security tasks. As policing continues to adopt shared services, AI has the potential to reduce manual workload while making large-scale environments easier to manage securely.

To read similar articles, check out our Technology channel.

Meet Tanium at the Microsoft Partner Pavilion throughout The Emergency Tech Show on 16-17 September at NEC, Birmingham. Register for your free ticket here.