Cyber Essentials is a simple but effective, UK Government backed scheme that helps you to protect your organisation, whatever size, against a whole range of the most common cyber-attacks.

Cyber-attacks come in many shapes and sizes, but the vast majority are actually very basic in nature. They’re the digital equivalent of a thief trying your front door to see if it’s unlocked. Cyber Essentials as a template standard is designed to help you prevent these attacks.

With Cyber Essentials certification there are two levels available:

Cyber Essentials

This is a self-assessment option which gives you protection against a wide variety of the most common cyber-attacks. This is important because vulnerability to simple attacks can mark you out as target for more in-depth unwanted attention from cyber criminals and others.

Certification will give 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 takes the Cyber Essentials trademark simplicity of approach, and the protections you need to put in place are the same, but for Cyber Essentials Plus a hands-on technical verification is carried out.

Why should you get Cyber Essentials?

Having a Cyber Essentials certification for your organisation will reassure your customers that you are constantly working to secure your IT against cyber-attacks.

Cyber Essentials can help you to attract new business with the promise you have robust cyber security measures in place, so customer data is safe and protected.

Cyber Essentials will give you a much clearer picture of your organisation's cyber security level, where you need to continue working or improve.

In the UK market some Government contracts will require a Cyber Essentials certification.

How does your KACE SMA support Cyber Essentials?

Security patching and updates within your KACE SMA will provide the protection level that you require to meet the standards, as you configure your patch routine in KACE you might want to give some thought to the following points:

• Build in test rings, so you patch some test machines before you patch your whole organisation. This will prevent any patch that creates an issue having to be rolled back from lots of devices.

• Support your test rings with smart patch labels that contain release date criteria. Using that functionality, you can be sure that the patches sent out to the rest of the business do not contain any patches that may have been released after the initial test schedule.

• Update your 3rd party applications in addition to Microsoft software as part of your main updates.

• Schedule your servers to patch on separate schedules to your desktop devices, to avoid any unnecessary downtime for the business.

• Identify any applications that are no longer supported or updated by their manufacturer and make plans to remove them from your infrastructure.

• IF YOUR COMPANY RELIES ON APPLICATIONS THAT CAN NO LONGER BE UPDATED OR IT REQUIRES A LEGACY MACHINE OR OPERATING SYSTEM TO KEEP THE APPLICATION ALIVE, CONSIDER A SOLUTION SUCH AS DROPLET COMPUTING TO REMOVE THE RISK.

• Use Patching KPI’s, reports and dashboards to manage your patching by exception and to highlight areas that may turn into issues longer term. For example, departments, locations or users that consistently refuse to update.

• Always remember, running an effective program of patching is not just about the technology that you use, the process will always also include elements of communication and politics that you will need to navigate to be truly effective.

If you would like more information about how to tackle Cyber Essentials certification, you would like to talk about legacy Operating systems or applications or if you just would like to know how to run more effective security routines using your SMA, then please contact us here.