Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the Cyber Essentials programme.

An independent academic evaluation of the effectiveness of Cyber Essentials found that its security controls work well to mitigate the vast majority of Internet-based threats. These security controls are kept under continual review. The primary objective for Cyber Essentials is to help all organisations mitigate cyber security risks, especially small and medium-sized organisations. The Government continues to work to ensure Cyber Essentials has the greatest impact for the majority of the target audience and is currently developing the scheme to ensure a) the journey to certification is as simple as possible, and b) the technical controls remain fit for purpose in the ever-changing cyber threat landscape.