Cyber Essentials
Cyber attacks cost organisations thousands of pounds and cause lengthy periods of disruption. Do you have a plan for what you would do if your customer database was stolen, your website was forced offline, or you couldn’t access your email, or business-critical data Cybercriminals don’t just attack banks and large companies – they target any organisation which isn’t properly protected, even small businesses. The majority of cyber-attacks exploit basic weaknesses in your IT systems and software. Cyber Essentials shows you how to address those basics and prevent the most common attacks. The scheme is designed by the Government to make it easy for you to protect yourself.
The five controls of Cyber Essentials
Boundary Firewalls
Information, applications and computers within your organisation?s internal networks should be protected against unauthorised access and disclosure from attacks based on capabilities and techniques that are freely available on the internet using boundary firewalls, internet gateways or equivalent network devices.
Secure Configuration
Default installations of computers and network devices can provide cyber attackers with a variety of opportunities to gain unauthorised access to your sensitive information. Your equipment should be configured to reduce the level of inherent vulnerabilities and provide your team with only the services they need.
User Access Control
User accounts with special access privileges typically e.g. administrators have the greatest level of access to data, applications and computers. When these accounts are compromised their level of access can be exploited on?a large scale so they should be assigned only to authorised individuals and managed effectively.
Malware Protection
Devices are vulnerable to attack by malicious software, particularly those that are exposed to the internet (e.g. desktop PCs, laptops and mobile devices). All your devices should use reputable, dedicated end-point protection software that will monitor for, detect, disable and remove viruses and malware with no exceptions
Patch Management
Any computer and network device that runs software can is vunerable to weaknesses or flaws. Vulnerabilities are common in many types of popular software and are discovered daily by hackers? and they can quickly be exploited. Software running on computers and network devices should be kept rigorously up-to-date.