Almost half of businesses (46%) and a quarter of charities (26%) report having cyber security breaches or attacks in the last 12 months. Like previous years, this is higher among medium businesses (68%), large businesses (75%) and high-income charities (57%) (HM Govt. Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2020).

Cyber-attacks on businesses large and small are a regular occurrence of daily life. It is virtually impossible these days to read a news story or visit a news website and not read a report of another data hack, phishing attack, successful ransomware incident or the ‘accidental’ loss of valuable customer information. A substantial amount of these costly incidents can easily be prevented by taking some simple steps and implementing a few basic controls.

Cyber Essentials is mandatory for all central government contracts advertised after 1 October 2014 which involve handling personal information and providing certain ICT products and services. Even if you are not a government supplier, you should still seriously consider embarking on the Cyber Essentials pathway to ensure that your business has implemented basic cyber security controls and by doing so, you have mitigated against common types of cyber-attack such as phishing and hacking.