The Importance Of A Cyber Essentials Certification

Achieving a cyber essentials certification is an excellent first step for any business. It focuses on five technical controls that can help a company to protect itself from common cyber attacks.

It is also a requirement for certain government contracts, such as those with the Ministry of Defence. It’s an easy, self-assessment process and a great way to improve your business cyber security.

Competitive Advantage

Cyber Essentials is a government scheme that requires businesses to take basic steps to protect their systems from cyberattacks. The cyber essentials certification demonstrates to clients and partners that you prioritise cybersecurity, setting you apart from competitors that don’t.

By implementing the scheme’s five technical controls, you can protect your organisation from up to 80% of common cyberattacks. The controls cover areas such as secure configurations (limiting the number of default settings that can be exploited), malware protection and patch management.

Requirement For Government Contracts

If you’re planning on bidding for any government contracts, then you will need to have a cyber essentials certification in place. This is because many companies are reviewing their suppliers’ cyber security credentials and only allowing third parties with these levels of accreditation to bid for contracts.

Cyber Essentials certification shows that your business takes cybersecurity seriously. It’s a good way to demonstrate to customers that you’re protecting their data, which is especially important if you handle financial or medical information. This will help you comply with the General Data Protection Regulation and reduce the risk of facing a fine from the ICO for any data breaches in the future.

Improve Internal Processes

Cyber attacks are becoming increasingly industrialised, with hackers quickly and easily exploiting vulnerabilities on unprotected systems to steal money or data. Implementing best practices for cyber defence, as advised by the Cyber Essentials scheme, is an effective countermeasure against these threats.

Achieving a cyber essentials certification is an easy way to improve internal processes. It forces organisations to carry out a security audit and uncover ineffective, stale data or settings that could be exposing them to cyberattacks. This gives the business the chance to improve efficiencies and productivity as well as putting it in a stronger position to win future contracts with the government and other large organisations.

The first level of Cyber Essentials gives your enterprise protections against a variety of different, commonly occurring cyber-attacks. This is achieved through five basic cyber essentials technical controls including a firewall which creates a barrier between your IT network and other networks to check if incoming traffic should be allowed into your system.

Reassure Customers

Cyber attacks are a serious problem for organisations. These attacks are designed to steal data or cause damage to systems. They can have a direct impact on customers and employees. Achieving Cyber Essentials certification is a great way to reassure customers that your organisation takes security seriously.

This is because it helps to prevent the most common cyber-attacks. Many cyber criminals look for targets that haven’t got the basic protections in place. This is why the UK government created the Cyber Essentials scheme in 2014. The scheme is also a requirement for certain government contracts, such as the Ministry of Defence (MOD).