What is Cyber Essentials?
Cyber Essentials is a UK government-based framework that helps participating organizations protect themselves, regardless of size, against a range of common cyberattacks.
Cyberattacks come in variety of shapes and sizes, but the vast majority are very similar in nature, carried out by relatively low skilled individuals. They’re the digital equivalent of a burglar trying your front door or window to see if it’s unlocked. Many of the tools used are either rented or purchased and have the same programming code base, so can be easy to spot and mitigate against.
Once the certification has been approved for the annual period then the organisation can display the Cyber Essentials or Cyber Essentials Plus logo to show that they have met the qualifying criteria.
The scheme identifies two levels of certification:
Cyber Essentials
This self-assessment option provides protection against the most common cyberattacks. Vulnerability to basic attacks can mark you as a target for more in-depth, unwanted attention from cyber criminals that leads to greater risk and greater expense.
Certification verifies that your defences will protect against the majority of common cyberattacks simply because these attacks are looking for targets which do not have the Cyber Essentials technical controls in place.
Cyber Essentials shows you how to address those targets and prevent the most common attacks.
Cyber Essentials Plus
Cyber Essentials Plus is built on the Cyber Essentials approach, and the protections you need to put in place are the same, but Cyber Essentials Plus adds a layer of auditing and technical verification to officially validate the certification.
Larger organisations that provide remote access to employees and have given remote access to their employees must get cyber essentials plus certification.
During Cyber Essentials Plus certification, an external auditor will test your security practices. They carry out a multitude of tests to check for vulnerabilities and test your solutions for virus and malware protection.
We have decided to partner with CyberSmart as a business to help us manage the Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus compliance.
What is the future for Cyber Essentials?
Cyber Essentials has been one of the fastest growing security certifications in the world, this shows how successful the certification has been. With the 2022 updates to the certification, it has shown the UK government is willing to review and keep this standard relevant with the industry.
We are hearing at trade shows and conferences that more companies are starting to require this certification to work with a business partner and in the coming years we can see all government bodies who transact with a private company setting this out as a minimum requirement.
This will only bolster the UK credibility as a safe country to trade with as we are keeping to a higher standard of cybersecurity.
If you are interested in taking the next steps to becoming Cyber Essentials certified, then please do not hesitate to contact our sales teams on (01227) 774850.