Cyber Essentials Scheme: A Guide

What is Cyber Essentials?

Cyber Essentials is an effective government-backed and industry-supported scheme that can help you protect your business against the most common cyber attacks. As well as providing you with peace of mind, the scheme can also help you win new work as many central government contracts require that you have this certification if the handling of sensitive information is involved.

You might not realise, but the majority of cyber attacks are actually very basic in nature and carried out by relatively unskilled individuals. The Cyber Essentials scheme provides a set of five controls that businesses can implement to avoid these types of attacks and achieve a baseline of cyber security. This can help eliminate up to 80% of the typical cyber threats that your organisation might be facing.

Why should you get Cyber Essentials?

Ultimately, you should get Cyber Essentials to: 

• Let customers and clients know that you are actively and continuously working to secure your IT systems against cyber threats
• Attract new work by guaranteeing that you have cyber security measures in place
• Demonstrate a clear picture of your business’ cyber security level

What Cyber Essentials certifications are available? 

Cyber Essentials: A self assessment that’s independently verified.

Organisations assess themselves against five basic security controls and a qualified assessor (such as ICT Solutions) verifies the information that’s provided. During this process, you will question and test your defences, which in turn will show you how to prevent the most common cyber attacks.

Cyber Essentials Plus: A technical audit of your systems.

Cyber Essentials Plus is a more rigorous test of your organisation’s cyber security systems. Instead of conducting a self-assessment, you will allow a team of experts to carry out vulnerability tests to ensure your business is protected against basic cyber attacks. Again, this is something that ICT Solutions offers to companies right across the UK. 

Let ICT Solutions help you achieve certification

Kick-start the Cyber Essentials certification process today with ICT Solutions. As leading IT specialists, we can help you get accredited in no time – contact us and we’ll guide you through it every step of the way.