Our recent article looks at how 10 years of Cyber Essentials have supported businesses, what the different levels of Cyber Essentials certifications are, how to achieve certification and who’s who when looking for Cyber Essentials support.

Cyber Essentials certification impresses the importance and need on business owners to protect against the ever increasing threats of cyber-attacks. Best practice is not just a practical and physical exercise though, it is an important education to all employees to support the overall protection of IT systems across a business. 

As sophisticated as our digital technology is today, so too are the scams, systems and processes used by attackers to penetrate systems. It’s easy to assume it’s these sophisticated attacks that find ways to exploit systems, but that is not the case. 

Unfortunately, where there are people, there are often problems and simple human errors, lazy attitudes and ignorance are often the easy access keys that hackers use to unlock and access systems. Cyber Essentials certification supports to practically protect hardware, software and buildings. It also provides educational learning to all your staff members, no matter what job role they are in, that form the base layer of protection your business needs.

What is Cyber Essentials?
Cyber Essentials is a UK Government approved certification. It supports businesses to be cyber aware and provides five core controls that have been developed to protect businesses against the most common cyber-attacks, if implemented correctly.

A business completes a self-assessment questionnaire that highlights where and how you can protect your employees, IT devices and buildings. The self-assessment questionnaire must then be signed off by a Cyber Essentials Independent Assessor.

Although Cyber Essentials is a self-assessment questionnaire, businesses will often contract IT Support companies such as BlueRock IT to support them to understand and implement requirements for certification.

What is Cyber Essentials Plus?
In addition to the self-assessment questionnaire of Cyber Essentials, to achieve Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation you must also pass a technical audit of your IT systems. These physical audits, verify that controls are in place, checking devices and services that are accessible via internet access.

Not only will Cyber Essentials certification better protect your business, it will also: