Cyber Essentials

Cyber Essentials provides a clear, government‑backed baseline for protecting organisations against common cyber threats. D2NA supports organisations through certification by identifying gaps, strengthening essential controls and providing evidence‑led assurance. Our approach goes beyond checkbox compliance, helping organisations reduce real risk, meet contractual and regulatory expectations, and build confidence that core security controls are implemented and operating effectively in practice.

Why the Cyber Essentials certificate is critical

Cyber Essentials provides a recognised baseline for protecting organisations against common cyber threats. Achieving certification demonstrates that essential security controls are in place, reducing risk, meeting contractual and regulatory expectations, and building trust with customers, partners and stakeholders.

Baseline Security

Cyber Essentials confirms fundamental controls are in place to protect against common cyber attacks.

Risk Reduction

Implementing Cyber Essentials significantly reduces exposure to the most prevalent threats.

Regulatory Expectation

Certification supports compliance with government, public sector and contractual cyber requirements.

Supply Chain Trust

Demonstrates to customers and partners that cyber risk is managed responsibly.

Incident Prevention

Strong baseline controls reduce the likelihood of successful ransomware and malware attacks.

Assured Confidence

Independent certification provides assurance that essential security controls are correctly implemented.

Trusted by IASME

D2NA are an IASME certification body for both Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus.

Did you know? Once awarded a Cyber Essentials certification, you receive a certificate and badge to display on your premises and website!

CyberAscend forms the DNA of our Cyber Essentials service

CyberAscend gives our clients confidence by providing clarity on what to expect and where they are on their journey.

Initiate

We begin by establishing whether Cyber Essentials or Cyber Essentials Plus is the best option and confirm scope, timelines and responsibilities. We explain the requirements, assess readiness, and agrees how much support is needed, ranging from guidance only to full hands‑on assistance.

Discover

During Discover, we assess your current posture against Cyber Essentials requirements. Gaps are identified across devices, users, software and configurations.

Remediate

We support remediation by prioritising gaps and providing clear, practical guidance. Where required, we can optionally assist directly with implementing changes, configuring controls or validating fixes.

Confirm

In the Confirm stage, we review evidence, validate responses and ensure requirements are met before submission. Our team will then conduct the final assessment and deliver the outcome to stakeholders.

Continue

Cyber Essentials forms a baseline, not a one‑off exercise. Through CyberAscend, we help organisations maintain alignment year‑on‑year, track changes that affect compliance and strengthen controls over time. Optional ongoing support ensures certification continues to reflect real‑world security, not point‑in‑time compliance.

What our Cyber Essentials clients receive as standard...

Cyber Essentials can be achieved through two levels of certification:

Level 1: Cyber Essentials

The first tier is a self-assessment option against five basic security controls, which we then verify as an assessor. This includes whether you are using firewalls, have a secure network, apply regular software updates and have secure user and administration accounts.

Level 2: Cyber Essentials Plus

The second tier involves physical tests of your network and computers by us. Successful accreditation of Cyber Essentials Plus provides a higher level of assurance that your organisation has a strong cyber resilience regime with correctly implemented controls in place to maintain a robust defence against cyber-attacks.

Feature

Cyber Essentials

Cyber Essentials Plus

Questionnaire

Certificate Awarded

£25,000 of Cyber Insurance

Optional Assistance Available from D2NA

External Vulnerability Scan

Onsite Internal Network Scan

Endpoint Compliance Checks

Start the journey to finding those vulnerabilities...

If you’re facing cyber security challenges or want expert guidance on finding the vulnerabilities in your stack, book a complimentary 30‑minute 1:1 session with one of our D2NA specialists.