Introduction
Charities play a vital role in society, often handling sensitive information and operating with limited resources. As the threat of cyber-attacks continues to grow, it is essential for charities to protect their data, systems, and reputation. The UK government-backed Cyber Essentials scheme provides a straightforward framework for organisations to defend against the most common cyber threats. For charity leaders, IT managers, and trustees, understanding and adopting Cyber Essentials is not just a matter of compliance, but a significant step towards ensuring long-term organisational resilience.
Why Charities benefit from Cyber Essentials
Achieving Cyber Essentials accreditation offers a host of benefits. Certification demonstrates your charity’s commitment to safeguarding data and systems, building trust with donors, partners, and beneficiaries. It is increasingly a prerequisite for working with government bodies and other organisations, ensuring your charity can access vital contracts and funding opportunities. The scheme also provides £25,000 of Cyber Liability Insurance for charities with a turnover under £20 million.
Beyond compliance, Cyber Essentials strengthens your charity’s cyber security, helping you meet data protection obligations under GDPR and other regulations. Accreditation reassures stakeholders that your organisation takes cyber security seriously, making it more attractive to potential partners and supporters.
Unique challenges for Charities
Charities face distinct challenges in pursuing Cyber Essentials certification. Volunteer management is a key issue: many volunteers use their own personal devices, which can introduce vulnerabilities. Ensuring all devices accessing charity data, such as laptops, mobile phones, and tablets, are secure and compliant is essential.
Another major challenge is posed by trustees. Trustees frequently carry out their charity responsibilities alongside other professional roles. They may resist the idea of having specific hardware or email addresses solely for the charity, preferring to use their existing devices and email accounts for convenience. This practice increases risk and complicates compliance, since trustees’ personal devices and email addresses might not meet the required security standards. Addressing these challenges requires clear policies, communication, and sometimes creative solutions to ensure all trustees are onboard with cyber security expectations.
Charities must also contend with a diverse array of technology, from cloud services like Microsoft 365 and client management software to personal routers and mobile applications. Personal routers are out of scope, but personal devices used for charity work are included, adding complexity to compliance efforts.
Key considerations for Cyber Essentials Certification
Cyber Essentials certification covers five core areas: firewalls, secure configuration, security update management, access control, and malware protection. Charities should ensure unused software and unnecessary user accounts are removed, disable autoplay, non-required ports closed, and that mobile devices use strong PINs. All operating systems, firmware, and applications must be patched within 14 days, and unsupported software removed.
It is vital to maintain a list of approved applications, prevent sharing of user accounts, and enforce robust password policies. Multi-factor authentication should be activated wherever possible, as it prevents a lot of compromises. Account locking or throttling after multiple failed login attempts is also required. For malware protection, solutions like Windows Defender are suitable, and mobile apps should be sourced only from official app stores.
When defining the scope of assessment, charities must include all relevant devices and locations, ensuring compliance across desktops, laptops, mobile devices, routers, wireless access points, and cloud services. Cyber Essentials certification is completed via self-assessment, while Cyber Essentials Plus requires independent verification and must be completed within three months of Cyber Essentials.
Stages of strengthening Cyber Resilience
Building robust cyber resilience is a journey, not a one-time tick-box exercise. For charities, this journey begins with achieving Cyber Essentials certification, which establishes foundational safeguards and security practices. The next stage, depending on your organisation, is moving towards Business Premium, which typically includes enhanced protections such as advanced identity management, device security, and access controls suited to organisations with more complex needs. For charities with higher risk profiles, sensitive data, or greater exposure, progressing to Managed Detection and Response (MDR) brings 24/7 monitoring, rapid threat detection, and expert incident response. MDR provides peace of mind and active protection against sophisticated attacks.
Partnering with a reputable IT provider can be transformative throughout these stages. An experienced IT partner will guide your charity through the requirements, offer practical solutions for volunteer and trustee device management, and help define your scope for assessment. This partnership not only saves time and money, but also reduces headaches by streamlining the certification and remediation process, ensuring your charity is well-protected and efficiently compliant.
Charities should regularly assess their cyber security and consider which stage of resilience best suits their risk landscape, resources, and mission. Each step—from Cyber Essentials to Business Premium to MDR—adds new layers of defence, significantly reducing risk and strengthening your organisations ability to withstand cyber incidents.
Strengthening Cyber Security: practical steps
To strengthen overall cyber security, charities should adopt the Cyber Essentials framework as part of their business strategy—even if certification is not compulsory. Regularly review device inventories, update software promptly, and educate staff, volunteers, and trustees on safe practices. Leverage tools such as identity protection and managed detection and response (MDR) to protect users and data around the clock.
Ongoing compliance is key; treat Cyber Essentials like an annual MOT for your organisation’s cyber security. Establish clear policies regarding device usage, ensure volunteers, staff, and trustees understand their responsibilities, and seek support from trusted IT partners for certification and remediation. These steps not only reduce risk but also build a culture of security within your charity.
Conclusion
Cyber Essentials accreditation is a valuable asset for charities, offering enhanced security, compliance, and trust. By addressing unique challenges—including volunteer and trustee management—and following practical strategies, your organisation can significantly reduce its vulnerability to cyber threats.
Here what one of our clients has to say;
“As achieving the Cyber Essentials accreditation became more important for us as an organisation, we were uncertain how we might fully understand what was needed. As customers of HBTech we got in touch for help and they made achieving Cyber Essentials straightforward for us, understanding our unique IT set-up and helping us with the self-assessment process. Cyber security is complex for charities, with volunteers and trustees often using personal devices whilst accessing sensitive data. HBTech helped our team grasp the responsibilities and best practices, building confidence in our security measures. As CO, knowing we are better protected against cyber threats, and that our charity’s data and reputation is safeguarded is a huge weight off my mind.”
Ange Moon, Chief Officer, Citizens Advice Test Valley.
To read more about our Cyber Security work with Citizens Advice Test Valley, read our Case Study; Citizens Advice Test Valley and HBTech: a partnership for cyber-resilience.
If you need any assistance with Cyber Essentials, Cyber Essentials Plus, or Cyber Security please contact us.
