Cyber Essentials is a scheme backed by the UK government designed to help organisations demonstrate that they have taken steps to protect themselves against most common cyber attacks.

There are two aspects to the scheme. Firstly, it provides information, guidance and best practice to organisations that may not have experts on-staff so that they can feel assured that they’ve got at least the basics of internet security covered.

Secondly, it acts as an indication to an organisation’s stakeholders (its users and customers, employees, suppliers, etc) that they are committed to internet security and have taken steps to ensure that appropriate measures are in place to protect themselves and their stakeholders’ data. As such, Cyber Essentials Certification is often a requirement for government contracts that require handling personal data or providing technical services.

mySociety is a technical organisation and we’ve always taken our security responsibilities seriously – we handle a lot of data across our services and ensuring this is secure and handled in a legal and ethical manner has always been central to our approach, so we are very pleased to say that earlier this year we became formally certified under the scheme – you can look up our certification details on the Cyber Essentials site.

Image: James Sutton

Original source – mySociety

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