Cyber Essentials Gap Analysis
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This analysis aims to identify areas where improvements are required to meet the Cyber Essentials Plus standards.
A gap analysis for Cyber Essentials Plus involves a detailed assessment of an organization’s adherence to the Cyber Essentials scheme, which is a UK government-backed, industry-supported standard to help organizations protect themselves against common online threats.
This analysis aims to identify areas where improvements are required to meet the Cyber Essentials Plus standards.
The key areas typically audited in this process include:
Boundary Firewalls and Internet Gateways:
- Assessing the effectiveness of firewalls and gateways in protecting against unauthorized access.
- Reviewing the management and configuration of these devices to ensure they are secure.
Secure Configuration:
- Evaluating the security of system configurations to prevent exploitation.
- Assessing the processes for removing unnecessary software and services to reduce vulnerabilities.
- Ensure MFA is mandated on all systems that support it.
Access Control and Administrative Privilege Management:
- Reviewing user account management to ensure least privilege access.
- Assessing the control over administrative privileges and their use.
Malware Protection:
- Evaluating the implementation and effectiveness of malware protection measures.
- Assessing the processes for keeping malware protection up-to-date.
Patch Management:
- Reviewing the procedures for regularly updating third-party software and systems.
- Assessing the timeliness and effectiveness of applying security patches.
User Education and Awareness:
- Assessing the training and awareness programs for users regarding cyber threats.
- Evaluating the effectiveness of these programs in fostering a secure culture.
Network Security:
- Reviewing the security measures in place for both internal and external networks.
- Assessing the controls to prevent unauthorized access and data leakage.
Secure Communications:
- Evaluating the use of secure communication channels, especially for transmitting sensitive data.
- Assessing encryption practices for data in transit.
Mobile and Remote Working Security:
- Reviewing policies and controls for mobile and remote working.
- Assessing the security measures for mobile devices and remote connections.
Data Backup:
- Assessing the security and accessibility of backup data.
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WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY
Our internal IT team were in need of expert consultancy to help us strengthen our cybersecurity measures and protect our sensitive data.
We engaged the services of Punk Security and were thoroughly impressed with the level of professionalism and knowledge they brought to the table.
The team was able to provide valuable insights and recommendations, and their guidance helped us implement effective security protocols that have greatly enhanced our overall security posture.
We originally sought Punk’s services to support us with a potential cyber-attack. The team responded immediately, out of hours, and calmly and professionally walked us through the necessary steps to determine that our environment hadn’t been compromised.
Since then, we have engaged Punk to carry out a third party audit of our cloud environment and a gap analysis against the Cyber Essentials and ISO270001 criteria. The team provided a thorough report with recommendations and are now working with us to improve our processes and systems.
I feel assured that we are walking towards best practice security operations.
Having attended a live hack demo held at C4DI we approached Punk Security to help sure-up our cyber security and DevOps processes. Punk not only completed this audit but passed on valuable gained knowledge to our team to broaden their skills and insight in this area.
We have since continued to work in partnership with Punk to implement a WAF and frequently consult their expertise in DevOps in relation to our application so we can all learn and grow in a collaborative way.
Punk are approachable, knowledgeable and also adept at explaining in layman’s terms for the less technical! We look forward to continuing our fruitful working relationship.
Our team at Illumio recently participated in a custom CTF event hosted by Punk Security, and it was a great experience! The CTF was not only challenging but also immensely educational, especially in the realm of cloud security principles.
The challenges presented during the CTF were designed to cover a broad spectrum of cloud security topics. This approach allowed our team to dive deep into practical scenarios that tested our skills and pushed us to explore new strategies and technologies. The balance between difficulty and learning outcomes was perfectly struck, ensuring that each team member, regardless of their prior level of expertise, found the event to be rewarding.
Punk Security were happy to perform external scans pro bono due to our status as an NGO.
The team also spent meeting time on two separate occasions to discuss our requirements and provide advice without any commitment or expectation. I’ll certainly be coming to Punk Security again in future should we need further security services
We initially reached out to Punk Security to help us out with our hosting architecture and were impressed with their breadth of knowledge.
With their expertise we were able to implement additional controls into AWS and successfully scale our systems. When we needed to gain more performance insights, their engineers configured our datadog platform end to end.
We’ve found that they really take the time to understand our problem and then put forward a great solution.