Welcome to our latest newsletter for 2017. It has been another busy summer for the team, with engagements ranging from supporting client incidents to delivering phishing based social engineering engagements and more! The next few months look to be just as busy with the upcoming Digital Leaders awards. In this issue of our newsletter, we will take a look at what has been keeping the team so busy.

We are very proud to announce that 7 Elements has been shortlisted within the ‘Cyber Resilience Innovation of the Year’ category, for our Incident Response Service.

The DL100 Awards honour the highest achievements from the past year, celebrating teams and individuals who are blazing a trail within the digital space. Robin Knowles, CEO of Digital Leaders, said that the DL100 Awards are a “truly independent list nominated by our growing community and shortlisted by 10 independent judges before a public vote puts them into order.”

“To be publicly nominated was amazing in its own right, and then to be shortlisted for this award is fantastic recognition of all the hard work the team has done to deliver a truly client focused service.” David Stubley, CEO of 7 Elements.

The final order for this year’s DL100 List 2017 will be based on the number of public votes received and the order they are placed in by the judges. The public vote and judges’ scores each make up half of the final score.

As such, we would be honoured if you could vote for 7 Elements. 

Voting closes this Friday June 9th at 12 noon.

Doing so is easy and all you need to do is visit the Cyber Resilience Innovation of the Year category and click on our company name, which can be done here.

If you would like to find out more about the awards, categories and shortlisters then visit the awards site here.

2017 has seen an increase in the uptake of our tailored phishing services, as organisations look to gain a deeper understanding of the threat posed.

Currently the average exposure (the percentage of employees clicking phishing emails) is 42% with outliers at 83% and in many of our engagements we are able to entice end users to provide domain credentials.

This clearly shows a need for training and awareness along with regular testing to measure the effectiveness of any intervening attempts to improve on how staff deal with phishing attempts.

As part of this holistic approach, 7 Elements are proud to announce that we are partnering with Advanced Engagement to deliver customised security awareness training, alongside real world phishing engagements to measure the effectiveness of such campaigns.

Advanced Engagement is a dedicated security awareness training company trusted by financial services organisations and professional bodies with the aim of positively influencing the security culture in your organisation.

If you would like to explore your organisations exposure to phishing, then please get in touch with our team to discuss how we can help.

We are proud to announce that 7 Elements Ltd are now listed as a ‘Trusted Partner’, with the endorsement of Police Scotland and SBRC for the delivery of Cyber Security related services. More information on the scheme can be found here.

The 'Trusted Partner' initiative comes at a key time, with Matt Hancock, the minister for Digital and Culture, making it clear that the Government wishes Cyber Essentials Accreditation to become a priority for all businesses.

Cyber Essentials is already a requirement for many Government suppliers and sub-contractors, such as in the Healthcare and defence industries. However, Matt Hancock stated that the Government will be widening this Cyber Essentials criterion to include more suppliers than ever. 

7 Elements is the leading Scotland- based Cyber Essentials Certification Body. As an independent technical information assurance consultancy, we pride ourselves on being well placed to help your organisation through the process of gaining Cyber Essentials certification.

More information on Cyber Essentials can be found here.