FT achieves Cyber Essentials Plus Certification

by Rosie Crocker

After significant effort the FT Cyber Security team has successfully achieved its Cyber Essentials Plus certification — the highest level of cyber security accreditation available, from the Government backed Cyber Essentials scheme.

The Cyber Essentials scheme was put in place to enable the UK government to reduce levels of cyber security risk in its supply chain. Achieving the basic level is necessary for bidding on central government contracts that involve handling of personal information, as well as for providing certain IT products and services.

Certification is carried out by a committee selected by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). Our certifier carried out remote checks on our systems and then visited us to carry out a thorough investigation. They determined areas where change was necessary to be compliant and presented us with a list of necessary changes. Over a period of several months throughout 2017, we made the necessary changes and managed to achieve the highest level of accreditation.

Here we all are celebrating our success with our certificate! Incase you are wondering if this is a box ticking exercise that any organisation could achieve, this article (about how each of the 200 NHS Trusts assessed For Cyber Security vulnerabilities) explains how companies can fail to meet the Cyber Essentials Plus standard.