A standard developed by the UK government to help organisations defend against cyber attacks
Cyber Essentials has been developed by the UK government to help organisations to guard against the most common cyber threats and demonstrate an organisation’s commitment to cyber security.
It’s used to show that you have taken steps to guard your organisation against cyber attacks. There are two levels of certification available, Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus.
It’s designed to be simple and quick, giving organisations of any size the opportunity to implement controls to address the basic requirements of information security. By doing this organisations will also be improving their organisational and technical controls needed to protect personal data.
Cyber Essentials is a self assessment while Cyber Essentials Plus includes a technical verification.
Cyber Essentials requires you to provide evidence about how you’ve implemented the controls required by the scheme. The actual evidence required will vary depending on the size and complexity of your organisation. Once you’ve gathered your evidence you submit the evidence to a Cyber Essentials Certification Body and they independently verify your self assessment to check whether you meet the criteria or not.
Cyber Essentials Plus takes a similar approach to begin with in that you need to be Cyber Essentials certified before you can be certified at Cyber Essentials Plus. It then adds a technical audit of the systems that are in scope for Cyber Essentials.
Cyber Essentials can be implemented without any external help. Some organisations may find it more effective and a better use of their resources to contract another organisation to help them complete Cyber Essentials.
We offer organisations a fixed price ‘done for you’ service where using our experience and knowledge of managing information security, we’ll gather the evidence you need from your IT team or supplier and advise them what controls they need to introduce (if they aren’t already in place). We’ll also complete the online assessment on your behalf.
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