1. Speed and cost:
Certification can be completed in days or weeks, and pricing is accessible especially for SMEs.
As the UK prepares to introduce the Cyber Security & Resilience Bill, the spotlight is shifting from voluntary best practice to enforceable cyber standards. Against this backdrop, Cyber Essentials offers a clear, credible and cost-effective way for organisations to demonstrate that they take cyber security seriously.
For CIOs and CTOs – especially those outside regulated sectors – Cyber Essentials provides a structured starting point for building resilience without the overhead of enterprise-grade frameworks.
Cyber Essentials is a government-backed scheme, developed by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), that focuses on securing the basic elements of your IT estate. It requires organisations to implement and maintain five technical controls:
These aren’t cutting-edge defences – and that’s exactly the point. They’re the non-negotiables, the baseline attackers assume you don’t have in place. Research from the NCSC suggests that up to 80% of cyber attacks could be prevented by implementing these basic controls.
In a world of ransomware-as-a-service, business email compromise, and supply chain breaches, Cyber Essentials won’t make you bulletproof – but it will make you a much harder target.
For many organisations, Cyber Essentials offers three key advantages over more complex standards like ISO 27001 or the NCSC’s Cyber Assessment Framework (CAF):
Both levels assess the same five control areas – but they differ in rigour:
Not sure which is right for you? Ask these questions:
If the answer to any is yes, Cyber Essentials Plus is likely the better fit.
Achieving Cyber Essentials isn’t just a checkbox – it’s a chance to level up your internal practices. Here’s how to approach it:
Many Managed Service Providers – including Roc – offer Cyber Essentials readiness packages – useful if you need to move quickly or lack internal resources.
In today’s climate, doing nothing is riskier than ever – and with cyber due diligence becoming part of M&A, supply chain reviews and compliance audits, Cyber Essentials is a visible first move
It shows clients, stakeholders, and regulators that you’re taking cyber security seriously, and it provides a practical foundation to more advanced frameworks in the future. For CIOs and CTOs seeking a high-impact yes practical path to improved resilience, Cyber Essentials is an ideal place to start – and an increasingly necessary one.
Head of Security Services
It may come as a surprise, but most cyberattacks don’t happen at 10 am on a Tuesday.
More often, they happen when your teams are offline: when your SOC is running on minimal staffing, when an alert gets buried under hundreds of others.
AI adoption in IT is not uniform. The most advanced tools often require significant investment in licensing, infrastructure and integration. As a result, access to AI capabilities is often dictated by budget, not just technical readiness and expertise.
If your data is exposed on the dark web, but you don’t know about it – can you still be held accountable?
Like many industries and sectors, AI and automation are already changing the structure of IT teams. Routine operational work that used to be handled by junior engineers is increasingly carried out by intelligent systems. That work hasn’t disappeared, it’s just being done without human involvement.
The cyber threat landscape has shifted. Fast.
That means the traditional SOC, reliant on manual triage and static rule sets, is falling behind.
Enter the AI-powered SOC. Not just a nice-to-have, instead a necessary evolution in how we approach cyber defence.
Most organisations expect attacks to come from the outside: a malicious payload, a phishing email, a brute-force attempt at the firewall. But in many cases, the foundations of those attacks were laid weeks or months earlier – quietly, invisibly – through data already circulating on the dark web.
The pace of technological change in IT has never been faster, but it’s becoming a double-edged sword. With businesses racing to unlock the benefits of AI, automation and cloud-native architectures, the gap between the art of the possible and the skillsets on the ground is growing.
Discovering that your organisation’s data is on the dark web can feel like a worst-case scenario – but it’s becoming increasingly common. Here, Roc’s Head of Security Ade Taylor outlines the practical steps to take if you discover that your data, or data related to your organisation, is circulating on the dark web.
Technology is one of the greatest enablers of modern business – but it also creates a hidden cost. For decades, IT has followed a linear model: buy new equipment, use it for a few years, then replace and discard. That cycle is no longer sustainable.
