Why SBI

In today’s government IT landscape, operating system security and compliance are critical to maintaining trusted digital infrastructure. Agencies face growing challenges in managing diverse systems while ensuring consistent security.

Traditionally, agencies hardened and audited their operating systems individually. This decentralised approach led to:

• Inconsistent security standards across agencies.
• High time and resource investment in repetitive hardening.
• Increased maintenance overhead for IT teams.
• Varied interpretation of security controls.

The Standard Build Image (SBI) addresses these issues by providing a unified, pre-hardened operating system foundation that:

• Establishes a consistent security baseline across government systems.
• Accelerates deployment and reduces resource needs.
• Streamlines compliance with IM8 policies and CIS benchmarks.
• Eliminates duplicated hardening and auditing efforts.

As government digital services grow, SBI enables agencies to maintain robust security while optimising IT operations and resources.