Cyber Essentials Renewal: What Changes Each Year and Why It Matters

Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus are the UK government-backed certifications built around five core technical controls: firewalls, secure configuration, user access control, malware protection, and patch management. For accountancy firms, they've become less of a nice-to-have and more of a baseline clients, insurers, and increasingly regulators expect to see.

Why it matters for accountancy firms

Accountancy firms hold financial records, tax details, and often privileged access to client banking and HMRC systems, which makes them an attractive target. Certification doesn't eliminate that risk, but it demonstrates a firm has the fundamentals in place, and the assessment process itself tends to surface gaps firms didn't know they had — unpatched servers, over-privileged accounts, weak endpoint protection.

Getting started

A typical engagement begins with a gap assessment against the five controls, followed by remediation, then certification. Cyber Essentials Plus adds an independent, hands-on technical audit on top of the self-assessment, giving clients real assurance rather than a self-declared checklist. For firms considering ISO 27001 further down the line, Cyber Essentials Plus is a strong foundation since many of the technical controls overlap.

If you're weighing up Cyber Essentials or Cyber Essentials Plus for your firm, we work exclusively with accountancy and professional services firms and can talk you through what's actually involved.