Cyber Security? It’s essential

We’ve teamed up with our friends at Select Technology to look at the issue of Cyber Security for businesses.

Cyber security is essential for business and it’s much more than protecting your business from threats and security breaches. Increasingly, being compliant with recognised cyber security practices and certifications is a necessity and could be the difference between growing your business and losing out on new opportunities. 

A good place to start is getting Cyber Essentials certified.

What is Cyber Essentials?

It’s a government-backed scheme that sets certain technical expectations and standards that you need to adhere to and pass annually. It makes life easier by giving your business a great check list of things that you need to do to make it harder for the “crims” to compromise your organisation.

A Cyber Essentials certification is becoming a “need to have” requirement as threat levels increase and the continued use of technology grows.  For instance, if you want to create partnerships or bid on certain contracts (specifically Government, or any big supermarket), you may find them asking you, “are you Cyber Essentials certified?”.

Loss of business

If you experience a breach or don’t have the right security processes in place this could result in a loss of trust from your customers. For instance, if a business has been locked out of their systems, this can stop sales processes in their tracks, this is a direct financial loss to your business.  Another consideration is, where do those customers go? A competitor!  The longer-term financial impact is created by the loss of trust, which is hard and almost impossible to come back from.

Insurance: Are you covered?

Did you know, you might not be approved for some business insurance unless you have Cyber Essentials?  This is becoming a more common requirement by certain providers. Anything your business can do to reduce risk is going to help you get that much needed insurance. Having Cyber Essentials in place could get you that extra layer of protection so if in the worst case you experience a security breach, the insurance will pay out for ransomware and costs incurred from data loss.

Discover how you can get Cyber Essentials certified at www.select-technology.co.uk