Cyber Essentials
Verified Self-Assessment

Designed to help organisations of any size demonstrate their commitment to cyber security - while keeping the approach simple and costs low.

Cyber Essentials Verified Self-Assessment

Cyber Essentials is a simple but 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.

The Cyber Essentials Verified Self-Assessment gives you protection against a wide variety of the most common cyber attacks. This is important because vulnerability to simple attacks can mark you out as target for more in-depth unwanted attention from cyber criminals and others.

Certification gives you peace of mind that your defences will protect against the vast majority of common cyber attacks simply because these attacks are looking for targets which do not have the Cyber Essentials technical controls in place.

The Cyber Essentials (Verified Self-Assessment) shows you how to address those basic floors in your cyber security and prevent the most common attacks exploiting your data and reflecting on your reputation.

The 5 technical control themes of Cyber Essentials

Firewalls

You should protect your Internet connection with a firewall. Many organisations will have a dedicated boundary firewall which protects their whole network.
User Access Control

Standard accounts should be used for general work. By ensuring that your staff don’t browse the web or check emails from an account with administrative privileges you cut down on the chance that an admin account will be compromised.
Malware protection

Malware is short for ‘malicious software’ also know as Anti-Virus must be installed on all endpoints that support this software
Secure Configuration

Your accounts should always be password-protected. For ‘important’ accounts, such as banking and IT administration, you should use two-factor authentication, also known as 2FA.
Patch management

No matter which phones, tablets, laptops or computers your organisation is using, it’s important that the manufacturer still supports the device with regular security updates and that you install those updates as soon as they are released.

Why should you get Cyber Essentials?

Protect against approximately 80% of cyber attacks
Reassure customers that you are working to secure your IT against cyber attack
Demonstrates to your customers and supply chain that you have considered you security posture
You have a clear picture of your organisation's cyber security posture
Some Government contracts require Cyber Essentials certification