Building Confidence in Cyber Essentials Compliance with Qualys Policy Audit | Qualys
Summary: The UK's Cyber Essentials framework, developed by the NCSC and administered by IASME, was updated in April 2023 with a version addressing cloud security, multi-factor authentication, and secure remote work, and defines five technical controls: firewalls and internet gateways, secure configuration, user access control, malware protection, and security update management. The update management control requires critical patches to be applied within 14 days of release, and Qualys is marketing its Policy Audit and Security Assessment Questionnaire tools as a way to automate assessment against these controls.
Why it matters: The framework's patching requirement sets a 14-day clock for critical updates, and the article notes that misconfigured systems, unpatched software, and unmanaged access remain common causes of breaches. For UK organizations, alignment also bears on eligibility for government contracts.
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- Topics
- Data Breaches
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