Cyber Essentials Plus Stoke-on-Trent

Book your Cyber Essentials Plus audit in Stoke-on-Trent

Tell us about your estate and we will confirm a date and a fixed price. You need a Cyber Essentials certificate less than three months old to certify to Plus, and we issue those too. The audit is hands on: external and internal scans, every internet gateway, and a sample of around ten per cent of user devices checked for patching inside fourteen days, malware protection, enforced MFA and user access. Anything it finds, you get 30 days to fix and be retested. No travel charge in Stoke-on-Trent.

Why Stoke-on-Trent organisations get asked for Plus

The Potteries and the surrounding logistics corridor sit in supply chains that have been tightening for two years. Ceramics, automotive tiers and distribution businesses are all being asked to evidence rather than declare, and the clause names Plus specifically more often than it used to.

Cyber Essentials is a verified self-assessment: you answer, an assessor marks it. Plus adds an independent technical audit on top, where somebody tests the machines rather than reading about them. When a buyer says the self-assessment is not enough, Plus is almost always what they mean.

What the audit meets in Stoke-on-Trent

Kilns, production control systems, warehouse management and handheld scanners are frequently tied to hardware or software nobody can patch, and frequently on the same network as the office. Plus does not require you to replace it. It requires you to know what is there, keep it away from what matters, and evidence that the separation holds. We would far rather scope that at the start than meet it halfway through an audit.

What usually costs a pass in Stoke-on-Trent

Production and kiln control systems reachable from the office network
Handheld and vehicle terminals sharing one login between shifts
A business-critical application that only runs on an operating system nobody can patch

None of these is unusual and none of them is a reason to delay. They are the things worth checking before you commit to a date, which is what a pre-audit review is for.

Sequencing

You need a valid Cyber Essentials certificate, less than three months old when the Plus certificate is issued, and 30 days to remediate anything the audit finds. We certify both, so an expired certificate is something we fix rather than something that sends you elsewhere. The main Cyber Essentials Plus page has the detail.

Local, and no handoff

Stoke is under an hour from Albrighton and we cover it regularly. Audits are booked around production, including early starts and non-production days. The Lead Assessor who runs the audit is the person you speak to, and as an appointed Cyber Essentials Plus Certification Body we issue the certificate ourselves rather than passing it to a third party.

Common questions

Do you cover Stoke-on-Trent?

Yes. Stoke is under an hour from Albrighton and we cover it regularly. We are an appointed Cyber Essentials Plus Certification Body, so the audit and the certificate both come from us.

Do I need Cyber Essentials first?

Yes, and it has to be less than three months old when the Plus certificate is issued. If yours has aged out or you do not hold it yet, we can certify that directly first.

What does the audit actually test?

An external vulnerability scan of your internet-facing addresses, an internal authenticated scan across a representative sample of user devices, and testing of every internet gateway and any server reachable by an unauthenticated user. On the sampled devices we check malware protection, patching inside fourteen days, enforced multi-factor authentication on cloud services, and that standard users cannot do administrator-only things.

What happens if we fail something?

You get 30 days to fix it and be retested. Most things found at audit are configuration rather than cost, and we tell you exactly what and why rather than handing you a score.

We cannot replace the old production kit. Does that fail us?

Not on its own. The standard asks you to know what is unsupported, keep it away from what matters, and evidence that the separation holds. Pretending it is not there is what fails an audit.

Can the audit be done remotely?

Often, yes. Remote testing covers most estates. Where the estate genuinely needs somebody on site, we do that too, and there is no travel charge in our coverage area.