It doesn’t have to be expensive

Complicated and expensive is how many business leaders think about Cyber Security – but it doesn’t need to be that way.  One way we help our clients improve their Cyber Security is by making use of the excellent free to use services offered by the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre. 

The NCSC offers a growing number of services that help organisations of all sizes improve their cyber security – from technical tools to exercises for the board room.  Some of the tools are only available to public sector organisations while others are available to anyone in the UK.  Here are details about the tools freely available to all.

Early Warning

Cyber Criminals share and sell information to each other – and boast about their exploits.  The NCSC Early Warning system monitors information feeds from the cyber underground and the dark web and will alert you if any information about your business is mentioned.  Free and easy to set up, this is a great first step for businesses that have a website or servers on the internet that criminals could target. 

Sign up for NCSC Early Warning

Suspicious Email Reporting Service (SERS)

SERS enables anyone to report a suspicious email to the NCSC.  These reports are analysed by the service to identify any malicious websites that the email links to – and then to remove those sites from the internet in order to disrupt the cyber criminals plans.

Microsoft now offers a free plugin to Outlook which enables a user to report a phishing or suspicious email to SERS with the click of the mouse.  This not only helps thwart the criminals, but it also helps keep your staff mindful of the risks posed by malicious emails and gives them an easy step to take in order to identify threats to your business.

Learn more about the Office 365 SERS plugin or the NCSC SERS service

Exercise in a box

As we say in our Cyber Coach Security Awareness Training, when a crisis hits, it is too late to prepare.  The NCSC Exercise in a box is a free online tool that will help you test and practice your response to a cyber-attack – and you don’t have to be an expert to use it.

The service includes several exercises which you can plan to do in your own time, as many times as you want – providing a safe place to practice how to respond to a cyber-attack.  Think of it as the fire drill for your cyber security.

Learn more about NCSC Exercise in a box

Logging Made Easy

In our experience, whenever a business is dealing with the aftermath of a cyber attack and they begin to analyse their system logs – there is evidence of the attack taking place in the log files generated by every computer on the network – the problem was no-one was looking at those logs.

Logging Made Easy is a slightly more technical solution that will make it much easier for businesses with little or no cyber security infrastructure to gather all their logs into one place and make it much easier for someone to monitor them for the warning signs of a cyber-attack.  Known as SIEM (Security Information & Event Management), it is an important foundational step for any business that wants to take cyber security seriously.

Learn more about NCSC Logging Made Easy

Cool Waters helps businesses of all sizes to manage and improve their Cyber Security, to find out more or to get help implementing some of the NCSC tools listed here, speak to one of our consultants today.