EDGE is certified in Cyber Essentials

EDGE

is certified in Cyber Essentials

The CIRU are pleased to announce we have been successful in attaining our Cyber Essentials Certification.

The Cyber Essentials Certification programme was launched by the UK government in 2014 as part of its National Cyber Security Strategy. The primary goal of Cyber Essentials is to improve the cybersecurity posture of small to medium sized enterprises (SME’s) to establish a baseline of cybersecurity hygiene. Cyber Essentials is a certification that is a requirement for organisations bidding on government contracts in the UK, especially those involving the handling of sensitive information.

Our certification demonstrates the CIRU’s commitment and responsibility in managing the security controls of how EDGE is designed, developed, delivered, and maintained. In implementing these security controls, we reduce the risk of vulnerability through common cyber threats and protect organisations’ data from being breached.

Cyber Essentials aligns with the CIRU process of continual improvement, as cyber-threats evolve Cyber Essentials enables us to continually assess and improve our cyber security posture. CIRU continually review the five control areas of Secure Configuration, Boundary Firewalls and Internet Gateways, Access Control and Administrative Privileges, Patch Management, and Malware Protection.

For more information on Cyber Essentials, click here.

Global Cyber Attack- advice for our users

As you may all be aware, there was a global cyber attack on Friday causing problems across the NHS.

EDGE is hosted at a secure Tier 4 centre at Carelink, one of the highest level of secure centres available. The EDGE service was not impacted by the attack however, as a precaution we decided to temporarily stop access to the EDGE service on Friday evening to allow time for the threat to be better understood and reduce the risk of any impact to the EDGE service. On Saturday morning after further assurances, access to EDGE was resumed.

This was done purely as a precautionary measure.

We would advise that all NHS staff follow the guidance given by their organisation regarding security patches, run windows updates on all machines and continue to keep all computer systems up to date with anti-virus software releases. Further to this we recommend for those trusts who are running Windows XP to contact their IT department to update to Windows 10 as an extra safety precaution.

In general please can all users be extra vigilant when opening emails and do not open any attachments or click on any links if you are not expecting communication from the sender. Malicious emails may appear to come from other NHS employees, so even if you recognise the sender please do not assume that the contents are safe. If you think your computer has been infected by a virus we advise that you immediately disconnect it from the network or shut it down and contact your IT department.

This is also good advice for your personal computers to limit the impact of these cyber attacks.

We will continue to monitor the situation and react appropriately to continue to provide a safe and reliable service.