Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus consultancy
What is a Cyber Essentials accreditation? Does my business need it?
Part of our totalIT premium service, Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus certifications demonstrate that your organisation has robust defences in place against the most common cyber threats. With ramsac’s expert consultancy, we’ll guide you through both levels of certification, ensuring you’ve effectively implemented the necessary controls to protect your business and giving you the confidence to defend against cyber-attacks.
Why is a Cyber Essentials accreditation important?
- Government-backed, industry approved accreditation
- Protects your business
- Ensures basic cyber hygiene
- Reassures your customers and suppliers that your business is secure
Levels of Cyber Essentials certification
There are two levels of certification that can be achieved. Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus.
Our Cyber Essentials & Cyber Essentials Plus consultancy
To help you achieve your Cyber Essentials accreditation, we offer an in-depth consultancy service to ensure your business gets accredited. Included with our totalIT premium service, we guide you through your annual Cyber Essentials assessment and supported submission to an external auditor, including annual recertification aligned to the latest version of the Standard.
Cyber Essentials
Cyber Essentials requires the organisation, with help from a practitioner, to complete a self-assessment questionnaire, with responses independently reviewed by an external certifying body.
Review and gap analysis
Our trained Cyber Essentials specialists will conduct a thorough gap analysis. We’ll review your network and IT practices, evaluating how they measure up against the Cyber Essentials standards.
Closing the gaps and ongoing support
Based on our findings, we’ll create a gap analysis outlining areas for improvement and work with you to strengthen your cybersecurity measures. We’ll also assist with your annual Cyber Essentials renewal, ensuring you maintain your accreditation with ease.
Cyber Essentials Plus
Cyber Essentials Plus covers the same requirements as Cyber Essentials but tests of the systems are carried out by an external certifying body, using a range of tools and techniques.
Comprehensive guidance and pre-assessment
ramsac guides you through the entire Cyber Essentials Plus certification process, creating a tailored schedule and conducting a pre-assessment to ensure your readiness. We coordinate directly with the certifying body, making the whole process straightforward.
External assessment and certification
Our team assists you during the external assessment, keeps you updated at every step, and manages the certification process. From start to finish, we handle every detail to guarantee a smooth path to your Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation.
Benefits of a Cyber Essentials accreditation
Nowadays, it’s critical that a business can demonstrate an understanding of the best practices when it comes to preventing cyber-attacks.
With the right guidance, businesses can identify gaps in their knowledge about cybersecurity and build the best processes and policies.
- Updated processes to address current risks
- Improve the trust your business has with its clients and suppliers
- Win more contracts as Cyber Essentials becomes a prerequisite for new work
- Improve GDPR compliance in the long run
- Minimise the likelihood of an attack by 80%
Cyber Essentials FAQs
Unfortunately, a cyber-attack is extremely likely. According to Hiscox, small businesses in the UK are the target of an estimated 65,000 attempted cyber-attacks every day. Attacks can happen at any time and every business is vulnerable.
GDPR compliance is a journey not a destination. Organisations need to work continuously to ensure their data processes are secure and compliant. Cyber Essentials helps organisations protect sensitive data by ensuring they implement solid security measures, which by default helps with GDPR compliance.
Cyber Essentials certification is done annually, which will ensure organisations keep working on their cyber good practices, and as a result, their GDPR compliance.
ramsac have trained Cyber Essentials practitioners that can be bought in to undertake a gap analysis of where your network and general IT practices sit against the standard for Cyber Essentials certification.
The result of the visit will be a gap report that will help you to understand what you may need to do before applying for your certification, and of course, assistance with helping you get there as quickly as possible!
The Cyber Essentials certification has three simple steps:
1. Select a Certification Body through one of our Accreditation Bodies.
3. Verify that your IT is suitably secure and meets the standards set by Cyber Essentials – your Certification Body can help with this.
2. Complete the questionnaire – your Certification Body will provide this and verify your answers. Once you’ve passed, you will be award your Cyber Essentials certificate.
Visit the Cyber Essentials website for more information.
On successfully passing all components of the Cyber Essentials application, you will receive a branding pack including your certificate. The pack will also include a Cyber Essentials Badge that can only be displayed by organisations that have passed the relevant assessment.
The badge can be displayed by authorised organisations on:
– Websites;
– Promotional material;
– Letterheads; and
– Email signatures.
You can search by name to find organisations holding a Cyber Essentials certificate issued in the past 12 months here on the NCSC (National Cyber Security Centre) website.
The UK government recommends that you renew your certification at least annually. Re-certifying is like having an annual MOT for your cyber security controls. It gives your IT an essential annual check to protect against a wide variety of the most common cyber attacks. Speak to ramsac for advice on renewing.
While the Basic accreditation helps establish your recommended security baselines, it is not
verified by a certifying body, whereas the Plus accreditation is and ensures that your written and
technical policies are functioning effectively in practice, which includes:
1. Independent Technical Verification
2. External Vulnerability Scanning
3. Internal Security Testing
4. End-user Device Testing
5. End-User Practical Checks
Stay Cyber Essentials compliant with VMaaS from ramsac
Our VMaaS solutions help organisations stay compliant with UK Cyber Essentials guidelines by automating the deployment of software patches as soon as they are available and identifying hidden vulnerabilities across devices. This proactive approach ensures that critical security gaps are addressed promptly, reducing the risk of exposure and helping businesses meet Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus requirements effortlessly.
Trusted Partner of the Certification Body, Indelible Data Limited.
ramsac are proud to be recognised as a Trusted Partner of the Certification Body, Indelible Data Limited. This status recognises our expertise at preparing companies ahead of Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus audits. For more information, please visit here.
