Uncharted territory
The cyber security landscape today is one of universal digital services, the ubiquitous use of cloud services, remote and hybrid working practises and daily fraud and scam attempts. As the threat landscape rapidly changes, so does our understanding of essential cyber security.
According to the Government’s cyber security breaches survey, 50% of businesses suffered a cyber breach or attack in the past 12 months. Despite a considerable effort from the government to improve cyber security across UK businesses, there is still an urgent need to standardise the guidance being given and to assure consistent, correct, trustworthy advice.
Many organisations are concerned about cyber security yet lack in-house expertise or easy access to qualified people who can help them to secure their networks. Whether a business, a school or a charity, small organisations in particular, often have limited time and funds to invest in security; they might not know who to trust or fear they will over-pay or be sold more than they need.
As an expert organisation, Managed Service Providers (MSPs) have a large number of small business clients. You know that you understand small businesses and give good trusted cyber security advice but how do your clients know that?
Trusted advice
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is the UK’s technical authority on cyber security. From supporting the most critical organisations in the UK to working with the wider public sector, industry, SMEs and individuals to build resilience against cyber attacks, the NCSC’s mission is to make the UK the safest place to live and work online.
Cyber Essentials is the government-backed certification scheme that helps organisations, whatever their size, to protect themselves against a whole range of common cyber attacks.
Cyber Advisor is the National Cyber Security Centre’s Industry Assurance scheme tailored towards small organisations. The scheme, delivered in partnership with IASME, provides small and medium sized organisations with a pool of assured providers of reliable and cost-effective cyber security consultancy. Importantly, Cyber Advisors are assessed on their ability to give small organisations proportionate and sensible cyber security support.
There is evidence that the technical controls of Cyber Essentials mitigate the majority of high volume, low-skill attacks perpetrated through the internet. Therefore, one of the easiest ways to make the UK more secure is to help organisations to implement the technical controls at scale across the country. Cyber Essentials is recognised as a good baseline standard and there is confidence that it will improve the security for those that properly implement it.
Get the badge
Be recognised as an assured expert
Becoming an Assured Service Provider for the Cyber Advisor scheme allows you to display the NCSC Assured Service Provider badge as evidence that you are assured to give good cyber security advice in a proportionate way for small organisations. This will give confidence to your customers and become a market differentiator.
In addition to the badge which shows you have met the requirements of the NCSC scheme, you will be invited to regular update sessions to stay up to date with the latest developments in Cyber Essentials. You will also have the opportunity to feedback your experiences in providing consultancy and help to small organisations and, through this, shape the future development of this scheme and wider NCSC policy.
As a valued member of the Cyber Advisor network, both NCSC and IASME will work hard to grow the market for your services.
Future proof your consultancy with an industry recognised title
Benefits of being a Cyber Advisor
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Demonstrate your expertise and credibility with the National Cyber Security Centre’s Cyber Advisor badge
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Show you are a government assured service provider and can be trusted to give best practice cyber advice
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Demonstrate that you can understand and communicate with small organisations and offer proportionate solutions
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Increase opportunities to work, present and lead as a respected professional
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Be listed on the NCSC website as a Cyber Advisor assured service provider
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Join a nationwide network of validated and respected Cyber Advisors. Be part of the movement to help make the UK the safest place to do business online
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Ensure you have regular briefing from NCSC and IASME on changes to the scheme and new initiatives
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The opportunity to feedback your views and experiences to shape future policy and scheme development
The NCSC say:
“The NCSC is committed to actively promoting Cyber Advisor as a scheme and service – one way we’ve already done this is by selecting scheme members when we distribute government funding.
The NCSC is in its third year of making money available through the Funded Cyber Essentials Programme, to improve the security of small organisations in priority sectors. In year 1, when assured Cyber Advisors didn’t yet exist, this amounted to 7,380 hours of work. In year 2, the funding to do that work has only been made available to Cyber Advisor companies. We are adopting the same approach in year 3 and continue to actively promote Cyber Advisor at every opportunity.
People also ask why someone should choose a Cyber Advisor over another source of advice. Simply put, NCSC assurance helps to eliminate guesswork. You can be confident that your chosen Cyber Advisor is competent to provide the service because they have been rigorously assessed and operate within the NCSC’s scheme standards.”
Our Cyber Advisors say:
“Work as a Cyber Advisor has been in high demand, in part because of the NCSC’s Funded Cyber Essentials Programme. Since becoming an NCSC ASP (Assured Service Provider), we have been kept very busy and plan to put further members of the team through the Cyber Advisor exam soon.”
Andrew Spencer, Cyber Advisor, Evolve North
“Until the creation of the scheme there was no officially backed government stamp that approves an organisation or individual to give qualified cyber advice to small businesses. I love going into businesses that are struggling to improve their level of cyber security and giving them simple advice and templated policies to implement and seeing a massive improvement.”
Ian Waters, Cyber Advisor, Southern IT
“Being a Cyber Advisor instils trust in our business relationships and we would recommend becoming a Cyber Advisor for those consultants that want to form a lasting, trusted business relationship and our key advice is to become part of your clients’ business rather than just another supplier. We have made some genuine friends taking this approach.”
Chris Keogh-Ly, Cyber Advisor, Guardian Saints
“We wanted to ensure we carried the NCSC Assurance badge to distinguish us from other CBs and competitors. We also wanted to ensure that we weren’t going to be excluded from client tenders or grant applications open to only Cyber Advisors (such as the funded CE work).”
Neil Douglas, Cyber Advisor, Network ROI
For more information on becoming a Cyber Advisor, including the requirements, process and costs, click here