Why certification matters for service providers
MSPs and service providers are often trusted with customer systems, data and administrative access. That means customers increasingly expect evidence that the provider takes cyber security seriously.
Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus can help demonstrate a recognised baseline. They can also support customer assurance, tenders and internal improvement work.
Scope needs careful thought
For service providers, scope can be more complex than for a typical single organisation.
You may need to consider:
- your own internal systems;
- staff devices;
- remote administration tools;
- cloud platforms;
- customer management portals;
- privileged access;
- whether customer environments are in or out of scope;
- how supplier tools are managed.
Clear scope is important before certification work begins.
Certification does not replace good operational security
Cyber Essentials is useful, but it is not a complete security programme for a service provider.
Service providers should also consider privileged access management, secure remote administration, customer separation, logging, incident response, vulnerability management and supply chain risk.
Certification can be a strong starting point, but it should feed into wider improvement.
Customer assurance benefits
Having certification can make customer assurance conversations easier. It gives you recognised evidence to share and can reduce the number of bespoke questions you need to answer from scratch.
However, customers may still ask for additional information about how you protect administrative access, manage incidents or secure the services you provide.
Preparing for Cyber Essentials Plus
Service providers preparing for Cyber Essentials Plus should pay particular attention to patching, device management, remote access, administrator accounts, MFA and internet-facing services.
Because MSP environments can contain many tools and integrations, early preparation is important.
How Be Secure Cyber can help
Be Secure Cyber supports MSPs and service providers with Cyber Essentials, Cyber Essentials Plus, technical review, customer assurance and wider security improvement planning.
We can work alongside your team to help strengthen your own security posture and support customer-facing assurance requirements.