Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many suppliers have adopted the cyber security standards set out in paragraph 5.3.11 of the National Cyber Security Strategy.

On 1 October 2014, Government required all suppliers bidding for specified sensitive and personal information handling contracts to be certified against the Cyber Essentials scheme. Cyber Essentials is a government-backed scheme to help organisations protect themselves against common cyber attacks whilst demonstrating their compliance with appropriate cyber security standards.

As of August 2017 there have been 7,907 Cyber Essentials certificates issued to UK businesses. We do not specifically track the number of certified government suppliers.