Cyber Essentials is a government-backed scheme covering the security basics that stop the majority of common attacks. We get you through it — and make sure you actually meet the controls rather than just passing the questionnaire.
Public sector contracts and a growing number of private tenders ask for it. Without it, you're excluded before anyone reads your proposal.
Most SME breaches aren't sophisticated. They're an unpatched machine or an account nobody closed. Cyber Essentials covers exactly those.
None of it is exotic. That's rather the point — these are the basics that most breaches exploit.
Someone leaves and their accounts stay live for months — email, cloud files, sometimes admin access. Nobody offboards properly because nobody owns it. It's the most common failure we see, and it has nothing to do with hackers.
We check your current position against the five control areas and tell you plainly what's missing.
We fix the gaps. For managed IT clients, this is largely already done as part of how we run your estate.
We prepare the assessment and take you through certification.
Certification is annual. We keep the controls in place so next year isn't a scramble.
Cyber Essentials is a verified self-assessment. Cyber Essentials Plus adds a hands-on technical audit by an assessor. Some contracts specify Plus — check what you actually need before paying for the harder one.
It depends almost entirely on how far your current setup is from the controls. A well-run estate can be ready quickly. One with unpatched machines and no offboarding process takes longer, and that work is worth doing regardless of certification.
The controls are worth having either way. Whether the certification is worth the fee depends on whether it opens up work — and it increasingly does.
No. We do Cyber Essentials as standalone work. It's simpler if we already run your IT, because most of the controls are already in place.
If nobody in your business owns that question, a half-hour conversation is worth having. No obligation, and no pitch if we're not the right fit.