Firm successfully achieves Cyber Essentials & Cyber Essentials Plus Certification

In a time where cyber threats are at an all time high, it is important for firms across the country to invest time and effort into securing their systems against these threats.

At Martin Tolhurst Solicitors, securing and ensuring your data is safe is one of our main priorities, we have for years taken pride in our investments into our system but the questions remains, how do we prove to our clients that we are investing the time and effort into securing their data? This is where “Cyber Essentials Certification” comes into play.

Cyber Essentials Certification is specifically setup and governed by the IASME Consortium so that organisations, much like ours, can show to their clients that we are taking the necessary measures to secure their data. The certification is separated into two parts, part one being Cyber Essentials and part two being Cyber Essentials Plus.

“Cyber Essentials” involves a full self-audit of our system whereby we outline our processes, procedures and infrastructure in an application where it is then assessed by an independent security firm to ensure we meet the IASME Consortiums five technical controls. These controls are as follows:

• Firewalls
• Secure configuration
• User access control
• Malware protection
• Patch management

“Cyber Essentials Plus” involves an on-site (or remote, due to COVID-19) audit by an independent security firm, to fact check our initial Cyber Essentials self-audit. They also, within this remote audit, randomly select various devices on our network, whether that be laptops, desktops, and servers etc. to view for themselves and test to ensure that they meet a high level of security.

We are pleased to announce that Martin Tolhurst Solicitors were recently awarded Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus certification.

As a firm, we hope that this gives you, our valued clients, the confidence and reassurance that we are securing your data throughout your time with us.