Cyber Security Advice for Organisations

Strengthen your organisation against cybercrime

Cybercrime affects organisations of every size – but improving your resilience doesn’t have to be complicated. Taking just a few simple steps can dramatically reduce your risk and protect your people, data, and reputation.

We follow guidance from the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and work closely with the South East Cyber Resilience Centre (SECRC) to help organisations across the region improve their cyber resilience quickly and cost‑effectively.

Don’t forget, we have a number of fully-funded (therefore free) Cyber Protect services for organisations:

Where you start depends on the size and structure of your business:

For more information on these tools you can read on below or visit their websites from the links in the table above.

Sole Traders & Microbusinesses

Use Police CyberCheck

If you’re a sole trader, the quickest win is Police CyberCheck — our free step‑by‑step tool that helps you improve your cyber resilience without needing technical knowledge.

✔ Free
✔ No sign‑up
✔ No installation
✔ No data stored

All Organisations

Start with the South East Cyber Resilience Centre

The South East Cyber Resilience Centre offers free guidance, tools, resources, and affordable services to help businesses improve their cybersecurity.

They provide:

• Practical, easy‑to‑follow advice
• Free membership and learning resources
• Fully-funded cyber security services delivered by specialists

Small & Medium Organisations (SMOs)

Use NCSC’s tools

For SMOs looking to build solid foundations, the NCSC provides two essential resources:

NCSC Cyber Action Toolkit

The NCSC Cyber Action Toolkit is one of the most valuable, low‑effort ways for small organisations to strengthen their cyber resilience. It’s designed specifically for sole traders and SMOs who know they need to improve security but aren’t sure where to start.

• Built for small businesses – designed with SMOs to deliver clear, bite‑sized actions without jargon.
• Free, personalised action plan – it generates recommendations tailored to your size, risk level, and maturity.
• High‑impact, low‑effort steps – prioritises actions that significantly reduce risk quickly.
• Perfect starting point for Cyber Essentials – the toolkit intentionally forms a pathway toward meeting Cyber Essentials controls.
• Tracks your progress and motivates you with built‑in progress tracking and milestone markers.
• Protects your finances and reputation by addressing common SMO‑targeted threats such as phishing, email compromise, and ransomware.

The NCSC Cyber Action Toolkit gives SMOs a free, personalised roadmap to protect their money, data and reputation — with simple, high‑impact steps you can implement immediately.

Cyber Essentials

Cyber Essentials is a Government-backed certification scheme that helps keep your organisation’s and your customers’ data safe from cyber attacks. The NCSC recommends Cyber Essentials as the minimum standard of cyber security for all organisations.

• Proven to reduce your likelihood of cyber incidents by 92%.
• Demonstrates security to customers and suppliers.
• Helps win contracts that require baseline cyber security standards.
• May qualify you for free cyber insurance (UK‑domiciled, turnover <£20M).
• Start with the free Cyber Essentials Readiness Tool to benchmark your current status.

👉 Learn about Cyber Essentials.
👉 Use the free Readiness Tool.
👉 Get a free 30 minute consultation with an NCSC Cyber Advisor.

Medium, Large or Cyber-Mature Organisations

Adopt NCSC’s strategic frameworks

For organisations with more complex operations, governance, or infrastructure, the NCSC provides two frameworks:

10 Steps to Cyber Security

The NCSC 10 Steps framework is widely recognised as the UK’s most practical, comprehensive approach to building organisational cyber resilience.

• Comprehensive, enterprise‑ready protection covering governance, technology, people and supply chain security.
• Addresses the biggest causes of breaches — including poor configuration, weak access controls, lack of monitoring, and staff awareness.
• Designed for leadership accountability — emphasises board‑level engagement and a top‑down risk‑management approach.
• Builds long‑term resilience by embedding secure architecture, regular vulnerability management and robust incident response.
• Recognised and used across UK industry, including critical infrastructure, government departments, and major private‑sector organisations.

NCSC’s 10 Steps to Cyber Security helps medium and large organisations, or those who have built a foundation of cyber-maturity, build enterprise‑level cyber resilience, aligning leadership, technology and people to defend against modern threats.

Cyber Governance Code of Practice, Toolkit & Training

Effective cyber governance, like financial oversight, requires strong leadership and proactive engagement at Board level. To support leaders in this critical role, the government has introduced the Cyber Governance Code of Practice (the Code). The Cyber Governance Code of Practice is tailor-made for Boards and directors of both public sector and private organisations across the UK. The code is not intended to be used by those who are responsible for the day-to-day management of cyber security but can be used to highlight to boards what their responsibilities are. This is accompanied by the Cyber Security Toolkit for Boards and Cyber Governance Training (free, online).

Cyber Assessment Framework (CAF)

The Cyber Assessment Framework (CAF) is the UK’s gold‑standard model for assessing and improving cyber resilience in organisations operating essential or critical services – but it’s also increasingly used by large private‑sector organisations. The Cyber Assessment Framework (CAF) is mandatory for organisations delivering essential services under the UK NIS Regulations, while many larger businesses choose to adopt it voluntarily for its structured, evidence‑based approach to strengthening cyber resilience.

• Comprehensive, structured assessment across four objectives and 14 cyber security principles.
• Provides a systematic way to assess risk management, protection, detection and response — not just technical controls.
• Used by operators of essential services and critical national infrastructure, ensuring alignment with national standards.
• Improves organisational maturity by requiring evidence‑based indicators of good practice for every control.
• Enables consistent, comparable assessments across large or complex organisations — essential for governance, compliance and assurance.

The NCSC Cyber Assessment Framework provides a rigorous, evidence‑based model for managing cyber risk in large or complex organisations – ensuring consistent, measurable resilience across essential functions and supply chains.