Defence Cyber Certification in the West Midlands

DCC Level 0 assessment and certification for defence suppliers in the West Midlands, with the Cyber Essentials it requires, from one Certification Body.

Defence Cyber Certification for West Midlands suppliers

If your organisation supplies, or wants to supply, the UK defence sector from the West Midlands, Defence Cyber Certification is becoming essential. It is the MoD-backed scheme, delivered by IASME under Defence Standard 05-138, that evidences your cyber security to defence buyers. We help West Midlands businesses get certified without the usual runaround.

The four DCC levels, and where Cyber Essentials fits

Defence Cyber Certification has four levels, set by the cyber risk profile of the contract. Level 0 is the supply chain floor for very low assessed risk and has just three controls: hold Cyber Essentials covering the contract scope, process personal data in compliance with UK GDPR, and build resilience into your systems. Level 1 jumps to 101 controls, Level 2 to 139 and Level 3 to 144, so the step from Level 0 to Level 1 is far larger than the numbering suggests. Your level is assigned by the MoD delivery team through the contract's Cyber Risk Profile rather than chosen by you. Crucially, every level requires Cyber Essentials, and Levels 2 and 3 require Cyber Essentials Plus as well. Cyber Essentials is the technical baseline for every level.

How Solusec helps

We are a Defence Cyber Certification Body appointed to assess and certify Level 0, and we are a Cyber Essentials Certification Body too, so we can certify the Cyber Essentials that Level 0 requires at the same time, with no handoffs. For Level 1 we provide scope reviews, gap analysis across the controls and evidence preparation. Level 2 and Level 3 assessments, which require Cyber Essentials Plus, we refer to a body appointed for those levels.

The defence supply chain in the West Midlands

The West Midlands supplies defence primarily through metals, machining, castings, vehicle engineering and aerospace components, across a supply chain that runs from Coventry through Birmingham and the Black Country to Telford. Most of these firms are tier two or below and hear about certification requirements through a flow-down clause. We are based in the region, at Albrighton in Shropshire.

What the West Midlands suppliers most often have to fix first

These are the blockers that come up repeatedly here. All three are worth checking before you start an application, because each one is a remediation project rather than a paperwork exercise.

• Shop-floor equipment on embedded or unsupported operating systems.
• Small offices with no central device management and no asset list.
• Business-critical software from a niche vendor that blocks an OS upgrade.

None of these stops you certifying. All of them decide whether you certify in two weeks or two months, which is the difference that matters with the MoD's 31 December 2026 expectation in view.

Why this matters now

The Ministry of Defence has asked all industry partners to achieve DCC Level 0 by 31 December 2026. It is an ask rather than a contractual mandate: IASME, which runs the scheme, states that DCC is not currently mandatory, and holding it does not yet exempt you from the Supplier Assurance Questionnaire. The requirement that binds you contractually today is DEFCON 658 and the Cyber Security Model. Individual MoD contracts are already specifying a required DCC level, and you cannot bid above your certified level. Getting Level 0 and your Cyber Essentials in place now keeps you eligible and ahead of the rush.

What Level 0 looks like for a West Midlands supplier

West Midlands suppliers are concentrated in the tiers of a supply chain that hear about requirements last. The single most useful action is confirming the assigned level from contract documentation, because Level 0's three controls and Level 1's hundred and one are completely different undertakings and the numbering does not warn you.