Early Warning is a free service from the National Cyber Security Centre for UK organisations. Once you register, it watches for signs that your business may have been attacked or has a weakness that attackers could use, and emails you when it finds something.
It costs nothing, needs no software installed, and takes most businesses less than an hour to set up.
What you need before you sign up
- Your business domain name, for example yourbusiness.co.uk.
- The public IP addresses of your office internet connections. Your IT support or internet provider can tell you these.
- A contact email address that is checked every day, so alerts do not go unread.
How to sign up
- Go to the NCSC's free services page, linked at the bottom of this guide, and choose Early Warning.
- Register your organisation and confirm you are authorised to act for it.
- Add your domain names and IP addresses.
- Decide who receives the alerts and make sure they know what to do with one.
A step by step video of the sign-up is coming soon on my YouTube channel.
The mistakes people make
- Sending alerts to one person's inbox, which nobody checks when they are on holiday.
- Registering and then ignoring the alerts.
- Leaving out a second office or a domain used only for email.
Got a question about this?
Ask me about your own setup and I'll give you a plain English answer, usually within one working day.