Cyber Essentials is a government backed scheme to help businesses of all sizes keep their own online infrastructure secure and to contribute to a secure UK.

Cyber Essentials is a questionnaire, completed by yourselves, that is assessed by independent IT companies. When you can answer all of the questions in the affirmative your company will be entitled to display the Cyber Essentials badge, this can benefit your business by displaying to your customers that their data is safe with your company and displaying to cyber criminals that there are easier targets to be sought elsewhere.

More information can be found at https://www.cyberstreetwise.com/cyberessentials/ or you can contact me and I will try to answer any questions that you cannot find an answer to.

 

The three most basic keys to cyber security are;

Strong passwords – remember; three RANDOM words. Use special characters whenever you can, the £ character is especially useful as a lot of keyboards outside the UK don’t have it!

Anti-virus software -  Installed on ALL of your devices, do your employees connect their own devices to your network? If they do you need to think about AV policies.

Install patches regularly – criminals use accidental holes in software to get around security, as soon as these holes are found they are plugged. But if you are not regularly installing patches to all of the software you use, those holes are wide open.

 

The CISP allows businesses to share their experiences of cyber-attacks; how to avoid them, prevent them and recover from them. It also allows cyber security professionals and CERT, the government department responsible for the UK’s cyber security, to share information about new patches and new holes (known as exploits in the cyber security world) as soon as they are discovered. Some of the information is very technical but the more people get talking on CISP the more the conversation can be shaped by your needs. Get involved! You can’t get help until you ask for it.

More details about CISP can be found at  https://www.cert.gov.uk/cisp/  

 

Please remember that the weakest part of a security system is often the people that use it. You know how to keep your business safe, but do your staff? Make sure everyone knows the risks and your business will be more secure.