Small businesses face increasing pressure to protect themselves from cyber threats. With attacks becoming more sophisticated and frequent, no business is immune from being targeted. For small businesses, which often lack the resources or expertise, navigating the complex world of cyber security may be overwhelming. While implementing strong security measures is critical, it is equally important to focus on resilience – the ability to recover and continue operating after an attack. Cyber resilience takes proactive steps to build resilience and is essential to safeguarding operations, maintaining trust and ensuring long-term success, even in the face of inevitable threats.
Beyond financial losses, a cyber attack can cause significant reputational damage. For small businesses, trust and credibility are the foundation of customer relationships and supply chain partnerships. A breach that compromises customer data or disrupts operations can erode trust, leading to long-term consequences that are often harder to recover from than the immediate financial impact. This makes cyber resilience, being prepared to respond, recover and adapt, critical.
IASME Cyber Assurance
The IASME Cyber Assurance (ICA) standard provides a comprehensive approach to cyber security and resilience, building on the Cyber Essentials controls. It offers small businesses the help to implement robust measures to protect against cyber threats while ensuring that they can recover and continue operating in the event of a breach. Certification demonstrates a business’s commitment to cyber security and data protection, which is increasingly important for building trust with customers, investors, and supply chains.
Why Choose IASME Cyber Assurance?
Cost-Effective: Cyber security doesn’t have to be expensive. ICA offers an affordable solution, with certification costs starting at just £320 + VAT for micro businesses and up to £600 + VAT for larger organisations. This makes it a practical alternative to more complex and costly standards.
Accessible and Transparent: The standard and assessment questions are available for free download on the IASME website, making it easy for businesses to understand the requirements. Additionally, 255 Certification Bodies across the UK are available to assist organisations through the certification process.
Builds Trust and Credibility: Certification demonstrates a commitment to protecting sensitive data and maintaining business continuity, which is essential for building trust with customers, supply chains, and stakeholders.
Tailored to your Businesses Size
What sets IASME Cyber Assurance apart is its flexible, tiered approach, which adjusts requirements based on the size and complexity of your business without compromising resilience. This doesn’t mean that smaller businesses are exempt from critical aspects of cyber resilience – it simply acknowledges that some controls are not applicable to their size and structure.
The government’s Cyber Essentials certification is a prerequisite to the IASME Cyber Assurance assessment, so the organisations already have the basic technical controls in place and this scheme introduces the wider governance.
Here’s how the requirements are tailored to ensure the assessment process is not a barrier to the smaller organisations.
Sole traders and micro businesses (1-9 people): Focus on 20-30 essential requirements.
Small businesses (10-49 people): Address a broader set of controls to manage growing risks.
When you apply to complete the assessment, the size of your business will determine the appropriate depth of the standard and the themes and requirements that are relevant to you.
Cyber Resilience
With over 5.5 million SMEs in the UK, the demand for evidence of robust cyber security is growing. Many large organisations now require their suppliers to demonstrate cyber resilience as part of their contracts. By certifying to IASME Cyber Assurance, small businesses can reduce the likelihood of cyber attacks, avoid regulatory penalties, and safeguard their operations. The certification also helps businesses build a strong foundation for long-term resilience, ensuring they can withstand and recover from cyber incidents. Don’t wait for a cyber attack to take action – build your resilience.