Sector: Critical National Infrastructure
Resilience for the
systems that matter most.
Critical national infrastructure operators across power, water, transport, and communications are managing a threat landscape that has transformed markedly in the last decade. Espanaro supports CNI operators in building the monitoring, awareness, and resilience capability they need to protect essential services against increasingly sophisticated adversaries.
Sector context
The Critical National Infrastructure environment
The UK's critical national infrastructure encompasses thirteen designated sectors, including energy, water, transport, communications, and finance, each of which is operated by a mix of public bodies and private sector organisations. CNI operators face a distinctive security and resilience challenge: their systems were not designed for the current threat environment, their operational technology and physical infrastructure is often decades old and difficult to patch or replace, and the consequence of sustained disruption to their services extends far beyond the commercial. State-sponsored actors have demonstrated both the capability and the intent to target UK CNI as a means of achieving strategic effect. The NIS2 Directive and its UK equivalent are tightening the regulatory obligations placed on CNI operators, increasing the accountability for resilience and the evidence required to demonstrate it.
Where Espanaro fits
Our role in this sector
Espanaro addresses CNI resilience through a combination of Pulse Sentinel, providing continuous monitoring and intelligent alerting across CNI operational and IT/OT environments, and Consilium, providing the operational coordination and response management layer, including the incident procedures that qualifying sites must run and evidence. Harbour Guard sits behind that layer, governing who can access which systems, sites, and data under what conditions, and producing the auditable decision trail that regulators and duty holders increasingly require. Systems Engineering provides the integration capability to connect Espanaro's tools with the complex and heterogeneous infrastructure estates that characterise CNI environments. Cyber Protection and Resilience addresses the security of monitoring infrastructure itself, and supports CNI operators in understanding and managing their cyber risk exposure. Cloud and Enterprise Infrastructure provides the platform architecture for deployments that must operate at mission-grade availability.
Regulatory driver
Martyn's Law and the Protect Duty
The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025, known as Martyn's Law, places new public protection procedure and evidence obligations on qualifying premises and events. The Principal Use Regulations bring the standard tier into force in October 2026, with full Security Industry Authority enforcement expected from spring 2027. CNI sites with public-facing elements, from energy and water facilities with visitor or contractor access to transport hubs and utility premises, will increasingly need to show not just that a plan exists, but that it works and can be evidenced on demand.
Where Espanaro fits
Evidence, not just policy
Consilium coordinates the evacuation, invacuation, lockdown, and communication procedures that Martyn's Law expects duty holders to rehearse and be able to demonstrate. Harbour Guard governs the access and permission decisions behind those procedures, and Cognisight adds automated detection of the behaviours that trigger a response in the first place. Together they give CNI operators a documented, audit-ready evidence trail rather than a policy document that has never been tested against a real incident.
Operational pressures
What Critical National Infrastructure customers
are dealing with
The recurring challenges that Espanaro's Critical National Infrastructure customers face, and that define the operational requirement for our products and services in this sector.
Monitoring across complex physical and digital estates
Operational pressure
Threat detection in OT/IT convergence environments
Operational pressure
NIS2 and UK CNI regulatory compliance
Operational pressure
Sustaining essential services under degraded conditions
Operational pressure
Relevant capability
Scenarios, products & services
Relevant scenarios
Relevant products
Relevant professional services
Engage with Espanaro
Discuss your Critical National Infrastructure challenge
Tell us about the operational requirement you are working on. Our team will identify the most relevant combination of products, services, and expertise for your specific context.