Same-day Cyber Essentials
The honest answer to whether a certificate can be yours today, what has to already be true for that to work, and what to do when it is not.
Ready to buy?
Transparent, fixed pricing based on your organisation size. By default we give you access to the IASME portal to complete your Cyber Essentials assessment yourself, and once you submit it we aim to assess within one business day. You can preview the Cyber Essentials self-assessment questions to see where you stand first. Unless you add a gap analysis, there is no call or consultation; we simply send you the questionnaire to complete. Your submission is reviewed by a qualified, certified assessor, never fed into AI. Want us to check your setup first, or need it faster? Add a gap analysis or urgent turnaround below. Buy now to get started, or contact us if you have any questions first.
An appointed IASME Certification Body: your certificate comes directly from us. Verify our credentials on the BlockMark registry, and find us listed on the IASME website.
A same-day Cyber Essentials certificate is possible, but only when three things are already true: your five controls genuinely meet the standard, you can complete the self-assessment questionnaire in one sitting, and you buy the urgent turnaround option and submit before midday, so the assessment is prioritised to the same day. If any one of those is not true, same-day is not achievable at any price, from any certification body.
What a single day can and cannot cover
| Stage | Fits in a day? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Buying and portal access | Yes | Issued within hours of purchase |
| Completing the questionnaire | Yes, 2 to 4 hours | If you have the answers to hand |
| Assessment, urgent option | Within 1 business day | Prioritised in our queue |
| Patching, MFA rollout, admin rights separation | No | These are estate changes, not paperwork |
| Replacing unsupported software | No | Usually a project measured in weeks |
Notice where the line falls. Everything on the paperwork side of the process fits in a day. Nothing on the estate side does. Cyber Essentials is an assessment of your estate, so if your estate needs work, a day is not the unit of measurement.
The test for whether today is realistic
Answer these five honestly. Five yeses and same-day is worth attempting.
- Is every operating system, browser and application in scope still supported by its vendor?
- Is multi-factor authentication enabled on every cloud service, for every user, including administrators?
- Do your people do day-to-day work in accounts without local administrator rights?
- Are high and critical security updates applied within 14 days across all devices?
- Do you have a firewall or equivalent boundary protection on every device and network?
You can read the full self-assessment questions before buying anything. Doing that this morning is the single most useful thing you can do if you are hoping for a certificate today.
The three things that will cost you the deadline
Assessment speed is rarely what makes people late. These three are, and all of them are findable today.
- Unsupported software still in scope. Any operating system, browser or application past its vendor support date is an automatic fail. Upgrading a few machines is a day. Replacing a line-of-business application that only runs on an unsupported platform is a project.
- MFA missing on a cloud service you forgot about. It is required on every cloud service for every user, including administrators. The failure is almost never the main tenant, it is an old file-sharing account or a legacy mailbox.
- Everyday accounts holding local administrator rights. Separating admin from day-to-day accounts across an unmanaged estate takes longer than people expect and needs a short window of user disruption.
If today is not realistic
Then the useful question is not how fast the assessor is, it is how quickly you can close the gaps. Buy with a gap analysis, get the list in a day or two, fix it, then take the urgent assessment. That route is usually a week to a fortnight and it ends in a certificate. Chasing a same-day promise with an unready estate usually ends in a failed submission and a longer delay.
Price
| Organisation size | Certification | + urgent turnaround | + gap analysis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Micro, 1 to 9 staff | £320 | £420 | £720 |
| Small, 10 to 49 staff | £440 | £540 | £840 |
| Medium, 50 to 249 staff | £500 | £600 | £900 |
| Large, 250+ staff | £600 | £700 | £1,000 |
Common questions
Can I really get certified in one day?
Yes, if your controls already meet the standard. Buy in the morning with the urgent option, complete the questionnaire before midday, and we aim to assess it that same day. What no certification body can do is certify an estate that does not meet the five controls, however fast their assessment turnaround is.
Providers advertise six-hour and 24-hour certification. Are they lying?
No, but they are measuring the assessment only, from a completed submission. That is the short clock and it is not usually the one that makes you late. If your estate is ready, a six-hour assessor and a one-business-day assessor both get you certified inside your deadline. If it is not ready, neither does.
What if I submit and it fails?
You lose the day, not the money. We tell you exactly what failed and the scheme allows one free resubmission within a limited window. But a failed same-day attempt usually means the estate was not ready, which the gap analysis would have told you before you submitted.
Is same-day available at weekends?
Turnaround is measured in business days. If you submit on a Friday evening, even with the urgent option, assessment happens on the next business day, because there is no same-day left to use. Plan around that if your deadline is a Monday.
Do I need Cyber Essentials Plus as well?
Check what your contract specifies. Cyber Essentials Plus adds a hands-on technical audit by an assessor and needs a scheduled testing session, so it cannot be done same-day. If your requirement only says Cyber Essentials, do not buy Plus in a hurry.
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Cyber Essentials, as fast as is safely possible.
A quick call, an honest answer on what is achievable, a fixed price, and a Certification Body that moves fast.