Your quick guide to Cyber Essentials

What is Cyber Essentials?

Cyber Essentials is an effective, UK 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’re the digital equivalent of a thief trying your front door to see if it’s unlocked.

There are two levels of Cyber Essentials certification:

Cyber Essentials
This is the National Cyber Security Centre's (NCSC) self-assessment option that gives you protection against a wide variety of the most common cyber attacks. This is important because vulnerability to basic attacks can mark you out as a 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.

Cyber Essentials shows you how to address those basics and prevent the most common attacks.

Cyber Essentials Plus
Cyber Essentials Plus still has the Cyber Essentials trademark simplicity of approach, and the protection you need to put in place is the same, but for Cyber Essentials Plus a hands-on technical verification is carried out.

Alternatively, you can familiarise yourself with cyber security terminology, gaining enough knowledge to begin securing your IT.