As a business who manages sensitive data and intellectual property for our clients, cyber security is a topic which we are not only passionate about, but one which we take very seriously.
For the last four years we have been working with Highstream Solutions, our remote IT support service provider, to achieve our Cyber Essentials Plus certification. The certification is a government backed scheme launched in 2014 to encourage businesses of all sizes to focus on general cyber security awareness and protection measures.
There are two levels to the certification:
- Cyber Essentials accreditation involves businesses self-assessing their security posture and completing a questionnaire, which is then independently verified. This option shows you how to protect your business against a wide range of the most common attacks. By removing your vulnerability to these simple attacks, you become less of an easy target for cyber criminals.
- Cyber Essentials Plus takes this one step further; whilst the protections you need to put in place are the same, an accredited third-party assessor is invited to validate and verify information security is present within the business’ core management and operating procedures.
Whilst we have always focussed on the Cyber Essentials Plus level of certification to give our customers peace of mind that our cyber defences are strong, we cannot underestimate the human factor. According to research published by Kaspersky, "careless or uninformed staff, are the second most likely cause of a serious security breach” – second to malware or viruses.
Due to the human threat, we have implemented an annual cyber security training session which is compulsory for all employees who have access to a computer. We use these training sessions to educate our employees on typical scams and threats being used by cyber criminals and to communicate best practice for device and data management.
Our Managing Director, Alan Sheppard said;
“The threat of cyber-attacks is constantly increasing and it’s essential that as a business we are prepared to deal with these threats. Cyber Essentials Plus ensures we have an externally audited and government accredited system of protections in place, allowing our network and data to be prepared.
Over the past year, as the majority of the LCA Group team have been working from home for their own safety; we have increased our baseline security principles and added additional layers of protection , for example Multi Factor Authentication for all users.”
Cyber security will remain a top priority for us, and as the threat landscape evolves, we are confident that with the support of Highstream Solutions we will be prepared.