Cyber Essentials certification now includes Cyber Liability Insurance for companies who meet the eligibility criteria.  This change is a great addition to the scheme.  Cyber Essentials aims to ensure that all organisations have the 5 basic cyber security controls in place.  Our previous blogs on Cyber Essentials scheme  give a useful overview of the scheme.  Addressing the 5 key controls will stop the majority of cyber attacks on your organisation.  However, although dramatically reduced, the risk of attack cannot be negated completely.  This is where Cyber Liability Insurance can help.  It covers many of the financial impacts which could arise from from a cyber attack from extortion to downtime and regulatory fines.

To be eligible for the insurance, which covers up to £25,000 of legal and technical support for each incident, your business must:

• Be based in the UK
• Cyber Essentials must be in place and cover the whole business
• Turnover must be less than £25m per year
• You must opt into the insurance during the Cyber Essentials process

You can purchase additional coverage for an additional costs.  The annual costs of increasing the limits of liability at this time would be:

• £50,000 limit of liability = £56.00
• £100,000 limit of liability = £112.00
• £250,000 limit of liability = £224.00

We have guided many of our IT Support and IT Security customers in Glasgow, Edinburgh and throughout the UK, through the Cyber Essentials process  If you are interested in exploring certification for your company then contact us today.  Cyber Essentials is a great starting point but it is worth noting that we do recommend a multi-layered approach to cyber-security to keep your defences as secure as possible.