Are you protected from cyber attacks? Ensure your data is Protected
Cyber security should be a high priority for all businesses striving to keep their information and systems safe and secure from increasingly sophisticated attacks aimed at stealing, altering, disabling or destroying your critical private information. These attacks can be incredibly damaging to businesses – both practically and in terms of trust and reputation – as well as posing significant threat to customers’ data and supply chains.
Alongside a reliable, local partner, DNS are proud to be able to offer the Government-backed Cyber Essentials scheme to our customers, helping to protect businesses of all sizes against the very real threat of cyber-attacks.
Cyber-attacks are becoming a regular occurrence and, as well as targeted attacks aimed at bringing down or extracting data from a particular organisation, untargeted attacks also occur frequently, where cyber criminals indiscriminately target as many users, devices or services as possible. So, even if you don’t think you’re likely to be top of a cyber-criminal’s hit-list, you could still fall victim. They prey on vulnerabilities or weaknesses in systems which is why it’s imperative to make your systems and processes as robust as possible.
With modern ways of working, especially with remote working practises becoming more common in a post-Covid world, it’s crucial that every device on your network should meet cyber security standards, as every device (including BYOD) can potentially provide a gateway to your system.
Cyber Essentials has been developed by the National Cyber Security Centre (part of GCHQ) and is considered to be the best first step to a more resilient system. Essentially, it’s a set of 5 controls which, when applied properly and consistently, will improve your security. The controls cover the following areas:
Stay cyber secure with cyber essentials
Firewalls and Internet Gateways
Secure Configuration
Patching and Updates
Access Control
Malware Protection
There are two levels of Cyber Essentials – standard, and Cyber Essentials Plus. They both cover the same 5 control areas but, while the basic level is a self-assessment based on a questionnaire, at Plus level you have the additional peace of mind of your systems being checked by an authorised independent assessor who can test and verify their resilience and suggest and implement any additional protection required to help you to meet the CE criteria.
Once your business meets all of these standards and is found to be CE or CE+ compliant, you will receive certification which not only demonstrates to your customers and supply chain that you’re taking cyber security seriously, but it will also help you to pursue new business opportunities. Although CE isn’t mandatory for all businesses it is highly desirable and Cyber Essentials certification is a prerequisite for anyone tendering for contracts with Government departments, local councils or public sector organisations, for example.
Protecting your business from cyber threats needs to be on everyone’s agenda, no matter what sector you’re working in or the size of your business. While you can’t 100% mitigate the risk of attack, going through the process of achieving Cyber Essentials or Cyber Essentials Plus certification can substantially reduce the risk of cyber and ransomware attacks by making it much more difficult for potential data thieves to infiltrate your system.
Importantly, prioritising cyber security can give everyone, customers and colleagues alike, peace of mind – something which we’re very happy to help you achieve.
For more information about how DNS can help you to achieve CE or CE+ certification (or upgrade your current CE certification to Plus level) and what this means for your business, please get in touch.
