Cyber Essentials for 250+ Employees
At enterprise scale, the IT estate is usually mature but genuinely complex, shaped by years of growth, acquisitions, and different teams making their own decisions about tools and suppliers. Cyber Essentials rarely makes sense as an all or nothing exercise here, so the real work is agreeing which part of the business the certificate needs to cover, usually the part tied to a specific contract or client requirement. Getting the right people in the room early matters more than the technical work itself.
What's different at this size
We typically recommend scoping a defined part of the network aligned to what your contracts actually require, rather than the whole estate. This keeps the assessment manageable and avoids dragging unrelated systems into scope unnecessarily.
Typical vulnerabilities
- Distributed or hybrid infrastructure
- Multiple third-party integrations
- Inconsistent policy enforcement across sites
- Disconnected systems left over from mergers or acquisitions
Steps to get certified
A guided, hands-on path from scoping to certificate, no jargon, no guesswork.
Scoping
We agree the boundary of your assessment: a device, a network, or your whole organisation.
Self-Assessment
Complete a guided questionnaire against the five technical controls, with our support throughout.
Review
We check your submission and flag anything that needs addressing before it goes for formal assessment.
Certification
Your certificate is issued, backed by IASME/NCSC accreditation, valid for 12 months.
Questions from 250+-employee businesses
Yes, this is normal at your size and usually the sensible approach. We help you define a scope tied to what the contract actually requires, so you're not pulling unrelated parts of the business into an assessment they don't need to be part of.
There's some overlap in the areas covered, but Cyber Essentials is a distinct, more focused certificate that many clients ask for specifically by name, regardless of what else you hold. It's worth having both if your contracts call for it, rather than assuming one covers the other.
Post-acquisition IT sprawl is common enough that we have a standard way of approaching it: bring a specific division cleanly into scope on its own systems, or agree what needs aligning first, rather than trying to force everything into one assessment before it's ready.
Realistically, someone with genuine authority over IT policy across the part of the business being certified, plus whoever can pull together evidence from your existing systems and suppliers. The single biggest delay we see at this size is the assessment waiting on sign off from someone who wasn't looped in early, so identifying that person upfront is worth it.
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