New Look for Cyber Essentials logo improves Accessibility and Recognition

As part of the continued review of Cyber Essentials, earlier this year the NCSC audited the scheme’s branding to ensure that the logo fully meets government accessibility guidelines, the colour palette was tweaked to ensure more contrast and greater accessibility. This has resulted in the new Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus scheme logos shown below:

The Concept of Accessibility Explained

Accessibility refers to the design and creation of content and technology that can be used by people with a wide range of abilities. This includes those with disabilities, impairments, or long-term illnesses, as well as those who may have temporary disabilities. By making your content and design accessible, you can ensure that the largest possible audience can use it without needing to make any adaptations.

For example, someone with impaired vision might benefit from the use of a screen reader, braille display, or screen magnifier. Meanwhile, someone with motor difficulties might use a special mouse, speech recognition software, or an on-screen keyboard emulator.

The goal of accessibility is to create a positive user experience for all. By eliminating common accessibility problems, such as websites that are difficult to use on mobile devices or inaccessible PDF forms, you can improve the speed, ease of use, and search engine ranking of your website or mobile app. Additionally, by improving colour contrast and text legibility, you can ensure those visually impaired individuals can use your content with ease.

Read the full guidance about accessibility requirements here

What is changing:

The Certification Mark for the Cyber Essentials scheme will not be changing. As a reminder, the scheme logos should be used when promoting the Cyber Essentials scheme (across social media, websites, printed materials etc). The Certification Mark should not be used to promote the scheme, it can only be used to denote that a company is certified to Cyber Essentials.

How to display the correct logo on your website:

IASME has partnered with BlockMark Technologies to enable us to issue certificates and badges that are secure, transparent and verifiable. You will receive an email from BlockMark Technologies asking you to register. From their Dashboard, you will be able to access and download your certification badges. You will be able to add a badge to your email and website in line with the IASME guidance and use the system to prove you are a certified organisation.

BlockMark enables IASME to verify certificates and remove them if they expire or are revoked. Another benefit of BlockMark is that any changes to the badge design can be implemented automatically. In such cases, you will be given advance notice.

How Does Blockmark Registry Work?

BlockMark Registry is a platform which is essentially built around three parties: the issuers of certificates, the people or organisations that receive certificates and those that need to verify them. The web application uses a cloud-based database.

The big difference between the digital certificate and badge is that in the past, it has been in the form of a jpeg or png which can be cut and pasted onto a website and may indeed have stayed on a website long after it has expired. The BlockMark certification mark, however, is downloaded as a short piece of code which can be embedded in your website and email footer. Each time the certificate or logo is viewed online, the code retrieves the information from BlockMark’s platform in real-time and the logo is refreshed for as long as it’s valid. This means that the correct version of the logo or badge will be displayed every time and it will stay visible upon renewal without any further intervention. If you were to hover your cursor over a BlockMark badge, information pops up giving details about who it’s issued to and by whom, with the issue and expiry date. If you click it, you are taken to the full digital certificate and can view more detailed information about that certificate, the recipient, the scheme and the issuer.

By using BlockMark Registry, IASME ensures that its certificates and badges are secure, transparent and verifiable.

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