SPECTRE Framework: Strategic Cyber Resilience

Stop Delegating Cyber Risk. Start Governing It.

The SPECTRE Framework: Your Leadership Mandate for Cyber Resilience

The Problem & Urgency

In 2025, cyber resilience is no longer an IT issue—it is a matter of fiduciary duty and business continuity. Yet, the gap between threat and governance has never been wider. With 43% of UK businesses experiencing an attack last year and only 27% of boards naming a director accountable for cyber risk, accountability is fragmented and decisions stall when an incident hits.

The problem isn’t a shortage of tools; it’s a shortage of ownership. The UK Government’s new Cyber Governance Code of Practice and forthcoming Cyber Security and Resilience Bill formalize what regulators and investors already expect: Cyber resilience is a board-level duty.

Your leadership cannot afford to wait.

The Solution

Translate Technical Risk into Executive Control

Oak Consult’s SPECTRE Framework is the pragmatic seven-pillar model designed specifically to bridge the divide between security controls and strategic governance for UK boards and C-Suite leaders.

It provides the structure you need to enforce a “Secure by Design” posture, moving your organisation from a reactive technical function to an active, business-led discipline of continuous assurance.

This whitepaper is your blueprint for operational assurance, regulatory alignment, and sustained trust.

Key Benefits: What You Will Learn

Inside the Whitepaper: Seven Pillars of Strategic Control

You will gain the executive mandates to:

S – Supply Chain & Ecosystem: Govern every third party with access to your systems. Learn how to tier vendors by criticality and mandate contractual breach SLAs to manage your extended attack surface.
P – People & Behavioural Risk: Transform human error (the source of over 80% of successful breaches) into human resilience. Establish a ‘report, don’t hide’ culture and enforce out-of-band verification to defeat Al-assisted impersonation.
E – Enhancement & Measurement: Embed continuous learning by treating cyber as a feedback loop, not a destination. Demand the measurable efficacy of controls and track executive KPIs like Mean Time To Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time To Respond (MTTR).
C – Foundational Controls: Enforce the non-negotiable Zero-Trust baseline. Implement Just-in-Time privileged access and phishing-resistant MFA across all critical accounts.
T – Commercial Assurance & Trust: Safeguard the financial, legal, and relational capital that disappears fastest in a crisis. Use insurance underwriting as a free risk gap-analysis and pre-approve regulatory notification drafts to preserve public confidence.
R – Resilience & Continuity: Adopt the “assume breach” posture. Mandate tested, segmented, and offline backups (3-2-1 rule) and ensure your full-restore time meets your business RTOs.
E – Executive Leadership: Reinforce that ultimate accountability sits with the Board. Name an accountable Cyber Sponsor and embed cyber risk review into a regular, mandatory ExCo/Board reporting rhythm.