Cyber Essentials Plus:
Turning “Good Enough” into “Proven Secure”
For most organisations, "we take security seriously" has been a common conversation for years. Cyber Essentials Plus is where you prove it. It’s the difference between self‑declared secure and independently tested and verified.
At CyberPrae, we see Cyber Essentials Plus as a very practical way to harden your environment against the attacks you’re actually facing today – while also showing your customers, regulators, and insurers that you have things under control. Because CyberPrae live and breathe incident response and cyber recovery, we approach CE+ with one simple aim: make you measurably safer, not just better documented.
Why your organisation needs Cyber Essentials Plus
Cyber Essentials Plus is a hands‑on technical assessment of your real environment – not just a questionnaire. Our certified auditors test the controls that stop the most common attacks: phishing‑led compromise, ransomware, credential theft and opportunistic exploitation of unpatched systems and poorly secured user identity.
Organisations pursue (or are pushed towards) CE+ because it:
Reduces the likelihood and impact of cyber incidents
CE+ forces focus on the basics that stop the majority of real world attacks: patching, secure configuration, access control, malware protection and boundary defences. Get those right and you dramatically cut the “easy wins” for attackers.
Provides assurance to boards, customers and insurers
CE+ gives you an independently validated statement that controls are in place and are actually working. That strengthens your position in insurance renewals, due diligence exercises and member / customer assurance conversations.
Unlocks business and funding opportunities
Many UK government and wider public sector contracts now require Cyber Essentials as a minimum, with Plus seen as the gold standard. An increasing number of private sector frameworks and supply chains follow the same pattern – “no CE+, no access”.
Creates a clear, actionable security baseline
The CE+ control set is intentionally pragmatic. It gives you a solid baseline you can build on – into more advanced monitoring, threat intelligence and incident response – without boiling the ocean on day one.
How CyberPrae helps you get there
CyberPrae was founded by an expert team of incident response and cyber recovery specialists, working with some of the world’s leading risk management and cyber insurance providers. We’ve spent years rebuilding organisations after attacks – which gives us a very clear view of which CE+ controls matter most when things go wrong.
For Cyber Essentials Plus projects, we typically follow the steps outline here.
Start with a focused pre‑assessment
We benchmark you against the CE+ requirements, identify gaps, and map them to real‑world risk rather than just standards language. That gives you a prioritised, time‑bound remediation plan – not a 60‑page findings dump.
Bring Governance, Risk & Compliance and operations together
Our GRC team leads the CE+ programme – policy, scope, evidence, audit liaison – while our security engineering and SOC teams focus on the technical uplift: hardening endpoints, tuning policies, tightening identities and strengthening monitoring.
Use enterprise‑grade tooling you can keep using after certification
CE+ shouldn’t be a one‑off campaign. We integrate controls with the platforms we already use to protect our clients:
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VMDR for continuous vulnerability visibility and prioritised remediation.
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MDR / MXDR for log collection, behavioural analytics and 24x7 SOC monitoring.
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CTI for external attack surface and dark web monitoring.
Keep everything UK‑centred and auditable
Our SOC analysts interfacing with your environment are UK‑based, and security data for CE+ control verification is retained in UK data centres, aligning with typical regulatory and member expectations around data residency and assurance.
Plan for the bad day, not just the audit day
Because we also provide rebuild and recovery services, we design CE+ controls with incident practicality in mind – ensuring that logging, backups, privileged access and device build standards support both prevention and rapid recovery if the worst happens.
Why choose CyberPrae for your Cyber Essentials Plus journey?
If you’re looking for a partner who will simply
“get you a certificate”, we’re probably not the right fit.
If you want a partner who will:
Translate CE+ into plain language and clear actions for your team.
Own the project from scoping to successful audit – including evidence gathering and engineer‑level fixes where needed.
Integrate CE+ into a broader security roadmap (SOC, vulnerability management, threat intel, recovery).
Provide ongoing support so your “pass” becomes your new normal, not a one‑off peak…
…then CyberPrae is built for exactly that.
Please get in touch to start your Cyber Essentials journey
Cyber Essentials Plus shows the outside world you take security seriously. Our job is to make sure that, inside your organisation, that’s actually true.