Why is Cyber Essentials so popular?

Cyber security, an area keeping IT managers awake at night, because if your organisation was to be attacked, the repercussions are massive.

Fortunately, there are numerous cyber security solutions that can support your organisation to help prevent your organisation from becoming victim of a cyber-attack.

One of these solutions is achieving the Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus accreditations.

A government backed scheme from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) which has a primary aim to encourage organisations to adopt a best practice framework.

Not to mention the myriad of additional benefits that Cyber Essentials unlocks.

Today’s blog will look to explore why Cyber Essentials is so Popular with UK businesses.  Let’s begin with:

Protection against the most common threats:

You’ll understand that there is always the possibility of an attack, regardless of what strategy you have in place.  However, Cyber Essentials aims to strongly diminish the risk of attack.

Why does this make it so popular with organisations then?

Simply put criminals exploit weaknesses within your IT infrastructure.  Whether these weaknesses derive from your systems or your software.

Fortunately, this is preventable, as the Cyber Essentials framework provides you with a strong foundation and criteria to meet.

This in turn reduces the risk of attack from the prevalent and often unskilled cyber-attacks.

Show your customers, partners and stakeholders how seriously you’re taking your cyber-security responsibility:

Regardless of your sector, you will have a database full of stored details, which may include personal and/or financial details.

Your Cyber Essentials accreditation demonstrates that you’re not only taking your cyber-security responsibility seriously, but it builds trust and shows that you are striving to ensure that you are doing your upmost to safeguard not only your organisation’s credentials, but that of your wider archive.

With Cyber Essentials becoming the standard you could be losing out to competitors who do hold Cyber Essentials, as they will appear to be a more attractive prospect.

Tender for government contracts:

The UK government in their dedicated approach to improving cyber security stipulates that to tender for government contracts your organisation must hold both the Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation.

This is to both defend the integrity of sensitive government information, but also to demonstrate just how important the certification is, which makes it an easy decision for organisations to complete Cyber Essentials to gain a competitive advantage.

Internal auditing:

How often are you conducting internal IT audits and looking at your IT security policies?

The implications of cyber-attacks such as ransomware, or a data breach can be devastating in both financial and reputational terms and could be avoided through regular assessment of your policies, changing passwords and updates, to name a few.

Cyber Essentials requires you to complete a self-assessment questionnaire which involves scrutiny upon your security policies, which uncovers weaknesses, in turn enabling you and your team to make cyber security a priority, before progressing to Cyber Essentials Plus where an external assessor will conduct an in-depth audit of your security.

We hope today’s insight provides you with further information, so if you are curious about the Cyber Essentials certification process and how best to prepare, then please don’t hesitate to contact Data Installation & Supplies on 01274 869 099 or info@disnorth.com.

Our experienced team will be happy to assist.