You’lll need to complete the Cyber Essentials Questionnaire to gain Cyber Essentials accreditation. The questionnaire is part of the self-assessment for the basic certification. The Cyber Essentials questionnaire contains many questions, which were last updated in April 2023 to reflect the Cyber Essentials Montpellier update.
The questionnaire looks into each of the 5 key controls:
- Firewalls and Internet Gateways: Questions will explore how your organisation use firewalls and gateways to secure its network. There may be questions about the types of firewalls used, how they’re configured, and how access is managed.
- Secure Configuration: Thequestionnaire seeks to understand how your organisations systems and devices are configured to ensure they are secure.
- User Access Control: These questions will assess how your business manages user access to systems and data. You’ll need to describe how access privileges are assigned and monitored.
- Malware Protection: This section concerns your business’s measures against malware. You’ll need to share the types of malware protection software used and how your business ensures malware protection software stays up to date.
- Security Update Management: Here, the questionnaire will ask about your strategies for maintaining and updating software in your organisation to protect against vulnerabilities.
Cyber Essentials Questionnaire
The Cyber Essentials Montpellier was a large update to the questionnaire. There were 9 changes, these changes included:
- Clarification over the definition of ‘Software’
- Asset Management is Important for Cyber Essentials Accreditation
- Guidance for Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
- Device Unlocking
- Malware Protection
- Zero-Trust Framework
- The specification document for Cyber Essentials Plus has been updated and is now active.
- Readability (Style and language adjustments)
- The Cyber Essentials scheme requirements are now a consistent order; firewalls, secure configuration, security update management, user access controls, and malware protection.
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