Cyber Resilience and Cyber Essentials Grants

The threat of cyber crime has never been greater – regardless of size of business or amount of personal data you handle, your organisation could become a target for cyber criminals who are looking to make money and cause disruption to you, your staff and volunteers. Putting resilient measures in place to protect and strengthen your network is vital.

Cyber Essentials is like an MOT test for your car – it confirms that your IT systems have passed a key set of standards. If you can show that your organisation is meeting the security standards in Cyber Essentials, you can be confident that you have some protection against the most common types of cyber attack.

Our last round of funding has now closed, but you can still read about the programme on the FAQs page, or listen to our podcast in the player below – and if you have further questions you can contact us directly.

What is Cyber Essentials and why should I have it?

The Cyber Essentials Scheme is a Government backed standard in cyber security enabling businesses to demonstrate that they have taken action to protect themselves against the most common cyber risks.

Scottish Government support for cyber resilience

The Scottish Government has produced advice and guidance for voluntary sector organisations as part of their Third Sector Action Plan. Through this plan, the Scottish Government aims to:

• make it easier for individuals and businesses to access advice and support to prevent cyber-attacks
• make sure there are robust systems of response are in place when cyber-attacks succeed

The National Cyber Security Centre has produced the following resources to help charities

1. Cyber Security: Small Charity Guide (PDF Download)
   How to improve cyber security within your charity – quickly, easily and at low cost.
2. Cyber Threat Assessment: UK Charity Sector
   A 2019 report into the threat faced by the UK charity sector.
3. Five Key Questions for your Board agenda
   Key questions to help develop a constructive engagement with your board on cyber security. Boards new to this issue may want to break this discussion into several chunks.

If you are interested in becoming more cyber resilient and want to discuss this with the SCVO Digital team, please contact us at digital@scvo.scot.