Cyber Essentials | Cyber Security

What is Cyber Essentials?

Cyber Essentials is an effective, Government backed scheme that will help you to protect your organisation, whatever its size, against a whole range of the most common cyber attacks.

Cyber attacks come in many shapes and sizes, but the vast majority are very basic in nature, carried out by relatively unskilled individuals. They are the digital equivalent of a thief trying your front door to see if it’s unlocked. The Cyber Essentials process is designed to prevent these attacks.

A few reasons businesses should opt for the Cyber Essentials certification are:

To obtain cyber insurance
It’s cost effective
Mandatory for all organisations looking for specific government contracts
Provides more business opportunities

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Benefits of Cyber Essentials

Customer Reassurance - Reassure customers that you are working to secure your IT against cyber attack

Business Growth - Attract new business with the promise you have cyber security measures in place, especially when targeting large organisations or the public sector, where this is becoming a standard requirement

Reduce Your Risk - Significantly reduce the risk of direct financial fraud, or fines from the ICO for failure to protect customer data in the event of a data breach

Insurance Protection - Protect your cyber insurance validity by demonstrating that you are taking active measures to protect your IT systems

What's Required?

Our job is to get your business Cyber Essentials ready, and there are three stages to this:

Readiness Assessment
- We help you to complete an initial readiness questionnaire to confirm all the latest specifications for Cyber Essentials are being met.
Advance Remediation
- We remediate any areas which might pose a risk of the actual Cyber Essentials assessment failing.
Cyber Essentials Assessment
- We help you to complete the actual self-assessment questionnaire, which requires us to provide details of specific security measures which are in place. Each application has a fee, hence the Advance Remediation to maximise the chances of passing first time.

Once the three stages are complete, we await review by the NCSC (National Cyber Security Centre) and hopefully you will receive your accreditation on the first attempt.

You may then wish to add the Cyber Essentials qualification to your website and other customer-facing materials.

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Getting Started

To complete your Cyber Essentials accreditation, we will:

Review your current position in regard to cyber security at your business, and identify any Advance Remediation necessary to pass Cyber Essentials
Complete the Readiness Assessment
Complete any Advance Remediation
Complete and submit the Cyber Essentials Self Assessment on your behalf
Assist with posting the accreditation logo to your website upon completion

Annually thereafter, we will:

Remind you of the Cyber Essentials anniversary date
Complete an annual Readiness Assessment, taking into account any significant IT changes over the last year, along with any relevant changes to the Cyber Essentials specification
Remediate any weaknesses identified in the Readiness Assessment
Submit a new Cyber Essentials Self Assessment on your behalf for the year ahead

Get Cyber Essentials Ready

Cyber Essentials Plus

What is Cyber Essentials Plus?

Cyber Essentials Plus is an expansion of Cyber Essentials, and includes an audit of your organisations IT by a trained auditor. As part of the audit, they may confirm that all the necessary controls that have been declared in Cyber Essentials are implemented in the organisation’s network.

Keep in mind that, to be certified by Cyber Essentials Plus, you must already have Cyber Essentials Basic. Your verified self assessment must be dated within three months prior to applying for Cyber Essentials Plus.

Key Differences

Professionally conducted audit compared to a self-assessment questionnaire that can be carried out by employees of the business

An external certification body will remotely conduct vulnerability scans of your businesses systems

While Cyber Essentials is an audit of basic system requirements needed for baseline compliance, Plus ensures your business is compliant with all five controls listed in Cyber Essentials

While the Cyber Essentials self-assessment can be conducted by an internal IT team, Plus provides the benefit of working with individuals who have auditing experience in several comparable organisations

Recertification

Cyber Essentials expires after 12 months and we can assist with your recertification at each anniversary.

Recertification only requires us to review and update the application paperwork with any significant changes to your IT infrastructure in the last year, in addition to responding to any new or amended questions on the annual questionnaire, which is updated frequently by the NCSC to address new cyber threats as they arise.

Does the Cyber Essentials Certification sound right for you?

If you are interested in Purple helping your business get Cyber Essentials ready, contact one of our experienced IT support team today to discuss how we can help you.

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