The final stage of the Cyber Essentials process is to submit your questionnaire responses for assessment. Here we explore some of the things organisations get wrong that may lead to failure in Certification, and what to do about these things.

When attackers attempt to compromise systems, they often try to do it by loading some sort of malware code onto your device, Cyber Essentials deals with this by ensuring that organisations have strong practices to protect their devices from being compromised easily.

Attackers often get access to systems through weak account management practices, Cyber Essentials deals with this by ensuring that organisations have strong practices to protect user credentials from being compromised easily.

Patching software has been an irritant for users and administrators as it can taken hours to complete. Implementing patches is very important to protect against attacks and ransomware.

All your operating systems, apps, software and services you use must be configured correctly to protect you from attacks. Secure Configuration of user and system devices and servers must enable you to protect these assets and know when there has been a compromise.

An Organisation’s Internet Gateways (mainly routers and firewalls) are usually packaged in with modems as single devices and enable access to the Internet. Firewalls help control the flow of data coming into and out of an Organisation. Together these devices play a big role in the security of a Small Organisation’s network.

In many previous episodes, we’ve mentioned Cyber Essentials Certification as a way of demonstrating a certain level of cyber security controls. But what is it and how does a Small Organisation get it? Can your Small Organisation really get it working on your own or do you need an expert? This is the first of our seven-part series on How to Certify in Cyber Essentials Basics, without paying an expert to do the work for you.

The end goal of understanding attackers, how they attack, what they are after, and what makes it easy for them, is all to get a better understanding of how best to protect your organisation.

Attackers have been getting into large and small organisations for many years, and every week we read about all the breaches that could not be hidden from the public. Today we look at what Small Organisations may do in particular that makes it easier for attackers to get into their Organisation.

Every week the media covers stories about data breaches, ransomware, vulnerabilities and attacks to large organisations. These stories perpetuate a misconception that attackers only attack large organisations with assets worth going after.

The ubiquity of today’s technology has enabled unrivalled connectivity, which has brought with it unrivalled opportunities for attack.

When it comes to cyber security attacks, what do we know about them, where do they originate, how do they succeed, what is the goal of certain type of attacks? These are just some of the questions that hit the public imagination when it comes to attacks to Small Organisations. However, there are many myths and misconceptions around them.

When it comes to cyber security attacks, who are the attackers likely to attack a Small Organisation? What do they look like, how skilled are they, why do they do what they do? These are just some of the questions that hit the public imagination. But when it comes to attackers of Small Organisations there are many myths and misconceptions which hinder the preparation and response to attacks.

Small and medium-sized organisations sometimes have issues which result in a thinking that they should monitor what employees are doing. These issues may be well founded in many cases, but the fact remains that there is often a need to monitor what is happening on the network. In this blog we look at the right approach to employee monitoring for SMOs

  Social media has grown over the last fifteen years from being something you used occasionally to being something that some people rely on to do just about everything on. Social media sites and apps have included services and functionality to enable users to interact with brands and personalities in ways that were never possible.

People read or hear about breaches in the press on a regular basis, and website breaches are one of the largest categories of breaches that take place. These don't just affect large corporates, they affect small organisations as well, especially since they don't not have the expertise to secure their websites. Here we look at what small organisations can do to secure their websites.

As web development has matured so to have the applications and interfaces of websites and the browsers used to view and access them. The fact that we can do so much more on the web now than ever before comes with greater opportunities for criminals. Here, we go though some of the things people can do to ensure that they are browsing more safely.

For small organisations to keep large enterprise customers they must make sure that their supply chain is secure, consistent and not affected negatively easily. To do this successfully they have to invest in processes similar to those used by their enterprise customers. Here we explore some of those considerations for small organisations, so that you are not comparing apples to pears.

Today's enterprise customers are more attuned with risk and security and because of that they want to work with suppliers which take security seriously. This is especially so as there have been many high-profile breaches which originated from a third-party supplier. So, the best way that Small Organisations can get and keep enterprise customers is to demonstrate that they understand risk and security.

Get started with your Organisation's Security Programme! The hardest part of anything is often getting started, whether it is a personal fitness habit or getting started with our organisation's cyber security protection.