UK Cyber Essentials

Cyber Essentials is a UK government-backed certification scheme, developed by the NCSC and delivered through accreditation bodies (currently IASME), verifying five baseline technical controls: firewalls, secure configuration, security update management, user access control, and malware protection. It has two tiers — Cyber Essentials, a self-assessment verified by a certification body, and Cyber Essentials Plus, which adds an independent hands-on technical audit. It's effectively required for suppliers bidding on many UK central government contracts. Requirements were updated in April 2026 (v3.3), making multi-factor authentication mandatory and raising the minimum password length to 12 characters.