The London Digital Security Centre (LDSC) – a joint venture between the Mayor of London, the Metropolitan Police Service and the City of London Police – today launched a pilot of the first police-backed digital certification scheme for businesses.

The two-part certification was launched by the LDSC in partnership with Secured by Design (SBD) – a police organisation founded in 1989 that aims to ‘design out crime’ through physical and cyber security and processes.

“Almost half of small businesses in the UK have been the victims of cyber crime in the past 12 months, yet the overwhelming majority of cyber attacks can be prevented using simple measures,” the LDSC’s chief commercial officer Chris Diogenous said.

He added: “UK businesses can [now] demonstrate that they have taken the necessary measures to protect the data they hold and reduce their overall vulnerability to cyber crime.”

At the heart of the certification is Cyber Essentials, a Government-backed and industry-supported framework. Companies signing up to the certification scheme can gain two awards. The first, Secured by Design – Police Preferred Specification, will assess and verify cyber security suppliers to ensure supply chains are resilient to cyber attack.

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Seven early adopters – BLOCKPHISH, CyberSmart, the IASME Consortium Ltd, SecurityScorecard, Titania, Xcina, and Yoti Ltd – have signed up and will receive police-preferred status, if certain standards and behaviours are met.

The second award, Digitally Aware – Secured By Design, is a risk-assessment toolkit designed to help SBD members improve their protection against cyber crime.

The launch comes as the number of computer misuse crimes referred to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau increased by 63% in 2017. US software security giant McAfee and DC-based think tank, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, meanwhile estimated earlier this year that the cost of cybercrime to the global economy hit £431 billion in 2017.

The report identified online fraud as among the most common cyber crime in the UK.