Cyber Essentials Plus Certification – why it matters

Technology can be a double-edged sword.

It’s amazing from an efficiency point of view, it’s enormously helpful when it comes to optimisation, and it’s a crucial part of your portfolio when it comes to increasing profitability. But, at the same time, dependence on technology can open businesses up to attack by creating vulnerabilities that would otherwise not be there.

If what you’re doing in your warehouse is printing off lists and working from them, then it’s unlikely you’ll have a system that’s connected to the outside world. Which means it’s also unlikely that someone can hack into your systems and create whatever havoc they have in mind on any given day.

Business Vulnerability

But it also means that you’ll be very uncompetitive in your market – and that creates a different kind of business vulnerability altogether.

To be competitive, you need to leverage the advancements in tech that are available to you, while at the same time, safeguarding yourself from any potential cyber-attacks.

Which is where Cyber Essentials Plus comes in.

Cyber Essentials Plus

Cyber Essentials Plus is the gold standard for cybersecurity in the UK. It’s a UK Government backed scheme that builds on the basic Cyber Essentials certification, and it involves an independent audit of security controls that have been put in place to protect against a wide range of potential cyber-attacks.

It’s particularly relevant for organisations that handle sensitive customer data; like WMS (Warehouse Management Software) implementors such as Socius24. And achieving this certification has made sure that we have every recommended security control in place.

Discovery and Mitigation of Risk

For WMS providers like us, reaching Cyber Essentials Plus certification isn’t just about enhancing our own personal security measures. The certification process helped us to find and mitigate vulnerabilities, it helped us to firm up our foundation for safe, reliable operations, and it enhanced our defences against potential cyber threats.

Going through this process has aligned us with compliance requirements and the highest of industry standards. We know how important security is to our customers, and we take it extremely seriously.

Are you protected?

If you are working with someone like us, we recommend that you look for this kind of security certification. If your provider has it, then you can feel confident that your business data is being protected against breaches and cyber threats. Achieving the Cyber Essentials Plus certification shows that your provider is committed to their (and your) security, and that the measures they’re taking have been externally validated by security experts.

It was our intention that going through the process would help us to update our internal operations and streamline our existing security practices. We have many security-sensitive clients and we wanted to be proactive rather than reactive in ensuring that our data protection standards are as rigorous as possible.

Continuous Improvement

The Cyber Essentials Plus certification is just one of the ways that we are continuously improving as a business. It’s part of our commitment to our own operational excellence – something that we prioritise so that we can help our customers with their own strategic growth.

We’re investing in future-proofing our operations so that we can ensure that our customers are in the safest possible hands.

As ever, if you have questions, you can always find us on info@socius24.com