Cyber Essentials is the UK Government’s minimum baseline standard for cyber security for organisations of all sizes. The annually renewable certification scheme is aligned to five technical controls designed to prevent the most common internet-based cyber security threats. Cyber Essentials certification includes automatic cyber liability insurance for any UK organisation who certifies their whole organisation and has less than £20m annual turnover.

Once an organisation have passed Cyber Essentials, they can progress to Cyber Essentials Plus, which is a hands-on external audit of their systems.

A verified Cyber Essentials icertifcate is a prerequisite to Cyber Essentials Plus.

Although based on the same technical requirements, Cyber Essentials Plus includes a technical audit of your IT systems to verify that the controls are in place. In this way, it gives more assurance that you are complying with the scheme.

The audit covers a representative set of user devices, all internet gateways, and all servers with services accessible to the internet.