In 2024, nearly half of all UK businesses identified a cyber security breach or attack, and the numbers keep climbing. While headlines often focus on sophisticated nation-state intrusions, the truth is far more mundane and far more preventable: the vast majority of successful breaches exploit basic, well-known weaknesses. Default passwords left unchanged, firewalls that were never properly configured, software patches that were postponed indefinitely—these are the cracks that criminals slip through every day. Cyber Essentials Certification exists to close exactly these cracks. Backed by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), it gives organisations a clear, achievable framework to protect themselves against the most common internet-borne threats. It is not an…