Q Awarded Cyber Essentials Certification

August 9, 2016

Q Associates have successfully achieved certification to the Government’s Cyber Essentials Scheme, a key deliverable of the UK’s National Security Programme. The UK Government and industry-backed scheme helps organisations to protect themselves against cyber-attacks by covering essential cyber security precautions.

The Cyber Essentials Certification is awarded following successful assessment through a questionnaire and vulnerability scan, which is verified by an independent certification body.

Cyber Essentials concentrates on five key controls.

These are:

Boundary firewalls and internet gateways – optimum implementation and configuration of these devices to ensure they are fully effective.
Secure configuration – to check that systems are configured in the most secure way for the needs of the organisation.
Access control – ensuring only those who should have access to systems to have access and at the appropriate level.
Malware protection – ensuring that virus and malware protection is installed and is it up to date.
Patch management – ensuring the latest supported version of applications is used and all the necessary patches supplied by the vendor been applied.

To develop Cyber Essentials the Government worked with Information Assurance for Small & Medium Enterprises (IASME), Information Security Forum (ISF) and the British Standards Institute (BSI) to ensure Cyber Essentials certification is one of the most contemporary, comprehensive and innovative cyber security options available – aligned with current cyber security best practice.

Jane Sampson, Business Process Manager at Q Associates explained “This achievement benefits both our company and clients by showing that we keep our data secure. We already hold ISO27001 certification (Information Security Management System). Security is paramount to Q Associates and the addition of the Cyber Essentials certification gives us the utmost confidence in our ability to reduce the risks posed by cyber based threats.”

For further information regarding the Government’s Cyber Essentials certification, please click below to find out more.