Cyber Essentials Readiness Tool
The Cyber Essentials Readiness Tool is a free online questionnaire from the NCSC, run with IASME, that asks about your IT and gives a personalised action plan for meeting Cyber Essentials. It helps you prepare but is not an assessment, and no certificate is issued. Certification still means answering the Danzell question set and having a Certification Body mark it.
- Term
- Readiness Tool
- Also known as
- Cyber Essentials Readiness Toolkit, NCSC Readiness Tool
- Category
- Scheme and certification
- Requirement area
- Scheme vocabulary
- Questions
- None directly
- Reviewed against
- Requirements v3.3
What does the term Readiness Tool mean in Cyber Essentials?
The Cyber Essentials Readiness Tool is a free online questionnaire from the NCSC, run with IASME, that asks about your IT and gives a personalised action plan for meeting Cyber Essentials.
How does Readiness Tool apply to Cyber Essentials?
In plain terms. It is a practice run you do on your own. You answer questions in everyday language about how your organisation uses computers, phones and online services, and it tells you what to change before you apply. Think of it as the revision guide before the exam.
How it relates to Cyber Essentials. The tool works through the same five technical controls as the NCSC's Requirements for IT Infrastructure: firewalls, secure configuration, security update management, user access control and malware protection. It is free and does not involve a Certification Body or the scheme fee. When you are ready, you still complete the Danzell question set in the IASME portal, and a board-level person validates the answers.
Do not confuse it with the NCSC's Cyber Action Toolkit, which question A1.14 lists as a separate option when it asks where you heard about Cyber Essentials.
Common mistakes. Treating a good result as a pass. The tool relies on your own understanding of your set-up. It cannot check that updates really are installed within 14 days, or that MFA really is switched on for every cloud service. Those are automatic-fail questions at A6.4, A6.5, A7.16 and A7.17, so confirm them against the actual settings before you submit.
See this site's free readiness checker, gap analysis and how to get certified.
The NCSC lists the tool on its Cyber Essentials resources page, and it is hosted by IASME at getreadyforcyberessentials.iasme.co.uk. Checked on 3 November 2026.
Related terms
- Requirements for IT InfrastructureCyber Essentials: Requirements for IT Infrastructure is the NCSC document that sets out exactly what an organisation must do to meet Cyber Essentials.
- Certification BodyA Certification Body is an organisation licensed by IASME, the NCSC's Delivery Partner, to assess and certify applicants for Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus.
- Danzell question setThe Danzell question set is the current list of questions every Cyber Essentials applicant answers, published by IASME and used for assessments from 27 April 2026.
- Gap analysisA gap analysis is a review of your IT against the Cyber Essentials requirements before you apply, listing each gap and how to close it.
- Cyber insuranceCyber insurance is a policy that pays towards the costs of a cyber incident, such as a data breach or ransomware.
- Def Stan 05-138Def Stan 05-138 is the Ministry of Defence standard setting the cyber security controls defence suppliers must meet, graded by contract risk.
Frequently asked questions
The Cyber Essentials Readiness Tool is a free online questionnaire from the NCSC, run with IASME, that asks about your IT and gives a personalised action plan for meeting Cyber Essentials.
Would you pass the 2026 question set?
Answer 24 yes or no questions, built by the assessors who mark Cyber Essentials, and get a readiness score in about five minutes, with any auto-fail questions you miss flagged first in your results.