We've launched Cyber Essentials Preparation, a free website with everything you need to get through Cyber Essentials in one place. It explains every requirement and every question in the 2026 assessment in plain English, and gives you free tools to check whether you'd pass before you pay for anything. It's written by our IASME assessors, the people who actually mark Cyber Essentials submissions.
What is Cyber Essentials Preparation?
Cyber Essentials Preparation (cyberessentialspreparation.com) is a free guide to the UK Cyber Essentials scheme from Precursor Security, an IASME Certification Body. It explains every requirement and every question in the 2026 assessment, and includes a free readiness checker, cost calculator and software support lookup, so organisations can prepare and pass first time.
Why we built it
Cyber Essentials should be straightforward: five technical controls and a questionnaire. But the rules are spread across several official documents, the wording can be hard to interpret, and the scheme changes every year. Most organisations we work with have had to piece it all together themselves.
The April 2026 update raised the stakes. Cloud services can no longer be left out of scope, and some answers now fail the whole assessment on their own, including missing MFA on a cloud service or a critical update not installed within 14 days.
Most failed submissions we see come down to the same few things, and all of them are easy to fix if you spot them early. So we built Cyber Essentials Preparation to put the current rules in one place, explained by the assessors who mark them, so you can find the problems before an assessor does.
What's on the site
Every requirement and question explained
The site follows the assessment itself. There's a guide to each of the five controls (firewalls, secure configuration, security update management, user access control and malware protection) and to scope, which trips up more applicants than anything else.
Every question in the 2026 question set has its own page. Each one shows the question word for word, the answer that passes, why applicants fail it, how to fix it and what evidence to keep. The questions that fail you automatically are clearly flagged.
A free readiness checker
The readiness checker asks 24 simple yes or no questions and takes about five minutes. It gives you a score, shows which controls are at risk and links each gap to the page that explains how to fix it. The questions that would fail you outright count for the most, so you know what to tackle first.
Is your software still supported?
Everything on your devices has to be supported by its vendor and still getting security updates, and unsupported software is one of the most common reasons organisations fail. The Is it supported? tool lets you look up common operating systems and applications, see when support ends for each version, and find out what to do if something has dropped out.
Clear, upfront costs
The cost calculator shows the official IASME fee for your organisation's size and the full price of each option, so there are no surprises. It also covers IASME's government-funded offer, which takes 75% off the fee for eligible UK small businesses until 31 March 2027.
Guides for your sector and your systems
The sector guides explain who asks for Cyber Essentials in your industry, from government and NHS suppliers to law firms, charities and schools, and which questions your sector tends to get wrong. The setup guides take you step by step through the settings you need in Microsoft 365, Intune, Windows, macOS and common firewalls.
Cyber Essentials Plus
If you're going for Plus, there's a full section on the Cyber Essentials Plus audit: what the assessor tests, how devices are sampled, what passes and fails, and how to prepare.
And everything else
The site also covers what Cyber Essentials is, how to get certified, how long it takes, what happens if you fail, renewal, downloadable checklists, a glossary and a log of what changed in 2026.
Built for people and AI assistants
Lots of people now ask an AI assistant about Cyber Essentials before anything else, so the site is built for agents too. Every page has an agent-friendly alternative, which helps assistants give you answers based on the current rules.
Kept up to date
Cyber Essentials changes every year, so the site will change with it. Every page quotes the official NCSC and IASME wording, links to the source and shows when it was last updated. When the scheme changes, we update the site and log it. If you'd like to hear about changes as they happen, there's a monthly newsletter with scheme updates, end-of-support dates and tips from our assessors, and no sales emails.
Where to start
- New to Cyber Essentials? Start with What is Cyber Essentials?, then the scope guide.
- Want to know if you'd pass? Take the readiness checker.
- Renewing this year? Read what changed in 2026 and the answers that now fail automatically.
- Stuck on one question? Find it in the question index.
- Going for Plus? Read the Cyber Essentials Plus guide and our comparison of Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus.
When you're ready to certify, Precursor is an IASME Certification Body and offers assessor-supported Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus at a fixed price, with the IASME fee included and a free re-test if gaps are found. Visit cyberessentialspreparation.com to get started.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I check if I would pass Cyber Essentials?
Take the free readiness checker on Cyber Essentials Preparation. It asks 24 yes or no questions based on the 2026 question set, takes about five minutes and shows your score, the controls at risk and how to fix each gap before you submit.
Is Cyber Essentials Preparation free?
Yes. Every guide and tool on the site is free to use, and you don't need an account.
Is Cyber Essentials Preparation an official NCSC or IASME website?
No. The NCSC owns the Cyber Essentials scheme and IASME delivers it. Cyber Essentials Preparation is run by Precursor Security, an IASME Certification Body, and links to the official NCSC and IASME documents throughout.
Who is the site for?
Anyone preparing for Cyber Essentials or Cyber Essentials Plus, whether you're certifying for the first time, renewing under the 2026 rules, or an IT provider getting clients ready for assessment.