Cyber Action Toolkit: breaking down the barriers to resilience

We know that many small businesses – particularly those who are new to cyber security – believe that cyber security is too complicated or too expensive to implement. And many smaller businesses don't prioritise cyber security as they don’t think they’re at risk.

We also know from our own research that many smaller organisations can feel overwhelmed by the range of cyber security resources and guidance offered by the NCSC. For this reason, the NCSC has produced the Cyber Action Toolkit, a new way of providing advice in a way that engages small businesses, and more importantly, encourages them to take action. It's totally free, easy to follow, and provides instant protection from the start, even if they're new to cyber security.

The Cyber Action Toolkit – which has already been tested by 2,500 trial users – is proven to be more effective than ‘guidance alone' in terms of encouraging businesses to take action. We’d encourage anyone who is interested in improving cyber resilience within their organisations to read the accompanying NCSC Research Paper, which details the evidence behind this new approach. It should be of particular interest to cyber educators, training developers, security researchers, software developers and content designers.

The paper explains the thinking behind the Cyber Action Toolkit, including why the NCSC chose this format. As the paper explains “simplified, visually engaging, and rewarded cyber security messaging effectively address barriers faced by small organisations, providing a scalable model for wider industry adoption”. Furthermore, conveying this information using a ‘toolkit’ approach (opposed to via guidance) substantially encourages organisations to undertake cyber security measures, with a high level of technical correctness in implementation.

About the Cyber Action Toolkit

There are 5.5 million small organisations in the UK, comprising sole traders, small and micro businesses. All of these have between 0 and 49 employees, and all play a pivotal role in the prosperity of the UK’s economy. Unfortunately, these small businesses are just as likely to experience online crime as larger ones, as cyber criminals target organisations of all sizes working in any sector.

In other words, no business is too small to be a target.

The toolkit turns cyber advice from the experts at the NCSC into simple, achievable steps, allowing businesses to track their progress. As they work through the toolkit, they build layers of protection around their organisation which defend against common cyber threats (such as email hacking, data breaches and ransomware).

The Cyber Action Toolkit has now moved to Public Beta and is being rolled out to all sole traders, micro and small businesses across the UK. You can try the toolkit for yourself by visiting the Cyber Action Toolkit website.

Kate S
Deputy Head, Economy and Society Resilience