Cyber Essentials controls, verified before the assessor asks.

Cyber Essentials is the UK government-backed certification scheme run by the NCSC and delivered through IASME. It defines five technical control themes: firewalls, secure configuration, security update management, user access control, and malware protection. Basic Cyber Essentials is a verified self-assessment; Cyber Essentials Plus adds an independent hands-on technical audit of a sample of systems, testing that the declared controls are actually in place. Certification is valid for twelve months, and holding it is a requirement for certain UK government contracts, particularly those involving personal information or the provision of certain technical services. The scheme's challenge is not conceptual but operational: the five themes describe configuration states that drift constantly across a real estate of laptops, servers, and cloud services. CISGuard makes the two most configuration-heavy themes, secure configuration and update management, continuously verifiable through CIS benchmark scanning, and evidences access control and malware protection settings from the same scans.

The gap between Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus is proof. For basic certification you declare your configuration state; for Plus, an assessor tests devices and finds whatever drifted since the declaration. CISGuard closes that gap by making the declaration continuously true. Every in-scope Windows and Linux system is scanned against its CIS Benchmark on schedule, checking exactly the territory the five themes cover: default accounts and unnecessary services (secure configuration), patch currency (update management), unique accounts, least privilege and admin separation (user access control), anti-malware state (malware protection), and host firewall settings (firewalls). Drift detection alerts you when a device falls out of its declared state, so the Plus audit sample finds systems that match the self-assessment answers rather than contradicting them. For annual recertification, the Framework Coverage Report and posture history show at a glance whether the estate still meets each theme. CISGuard does not issue certificates; IASME-licensed certification bodies do. It ensures the estate they test is the estate you declared.