Cyber essentials certification is a simple, cost-effective, and straightforward way to ensure your organisation has adequate safeguards against common cyber attacks. Certification can be easily accomplished.
Certified Cyber Security professionals have become required to bid on central government contracts, so achieving certification can demonstrate to customers that you take data security seriously.
Security Measures
Financial, health, and legal professionals often handle highly confidential customer data. Therefore, it’s imperative that these industries implement basic cyber hygiene measures in order to protect themselves against malware attacks and other common threats.
Establishing a cyber essentials certification can assist these businesses in quickly, simply, and cost-effectively constructing a basic cybersecurity framework. Ensuring five key controls are implemented will reduce risks related to data breaches or cyberattacks that could cause damage.
The five key controls include:
Firewalls and anti-virus software can play a crucial role in keeping hackers at bay by only permitting data access according to predetermined security rules, blocking devices and applications from connecting to untrustworthy sites or services, and protecting you against malware attacks by white-listing suspicious programmes or running them in sandboxed environments.
Technical Controls
Cyber Essentials certification provides organisations of any size, industry, or location with a basic level of protection against the most prevalent cyber threats. It consists of both a self-assessment questionnaire and an external assessment conducted by an accredited assessor.
Acquiring certification can help businesses protect themselves from cyberthreats and assure customers that their data is protected. Achieving certification may also help companies win new business by showing they have put in place adequate security measures, attract international talent, or leverage remote working.
Before submitting an application, it is advisable to review your existing cybersecurity measures and determine whether you meet all five criteria of the scheme. If not, expert advice should be sought as soon as possible. Please remember that these requirements do not replace an extensive cyber risk management plan but serve as a starting point to protect businesses against common cyber threats; furthermore, this process is free for UK-based businesses and can be completed entirely online.
Organisational Controls
Cyber attackers gain unauthorised entry to an organisation’s data when staff do not utilise secure configuration settings or implement access controls to protect it from cyber attackers. Taking such precautionary steps has proven successful against over 80% of cyberattacks.
Maintaining devices, software, and applications up-to-date is also of the utmost importance for businesses seeking Cyber Essentials certification. Tripwire Enterprise can assist businesses in gathering the integrity monitoring information needed to demonstrate this adherence.
Once an organisation has successfully undergone the assessment and certification process, it will be eligible to display the Cyber Essentials logo, giving partners, clients, and suppliers greater confidence when sharing their data with it. Certification may also be a requirement of central government contracts involving personal data processing or ICT services; those seeking certification may either self-assess themselves or use one of several CREST-accredited assessors, such as IT Governance, for assessments.
Awareness
Cyberattacks can have devastating repercussions for businesses, disrupting operations and compromising data. By implementing basic security controls and becoming certified, organisations can reduce the risk of cyber attacks while also showing their commitment to data protection—two benefits that could help win new business deals.
Cyber Essentials is a government-backed scheme designed to defend businesses against common cyberattacks. Comprised of five security measures such as firewalls and secure configuration settings, its process allows organisations of any size to self-evaluate their security status quickly and easily.
Once an organisation passes their self-assessment, they will receive a certificate and branding package, which they can display on their website and marketing materials to demonstrate they take cybersecurity seriously. This certificate lasts 12 months before needing renewal; additionally, the IASME certification body offers services to review technical information submitted for certification by organisations seeking it.