New Research: Thursday 31st July 2025
The majority of Barristers Chambers do not align with The Bar Council and Law Society’s joint recommendation to achieve Cyber Essentials certification, a new study by IT services company Atlas Cloud has found.
To celebrate their acquisition of Challow, a compliance-first IT company with clients including New Park Court Chambers and 7 Bedford Row, Atlas Cloud cross-referenced all multi-member Chambers from the Barrister’s Register with IASME’s official website of published Cyber Essentials certifications. Of the 321 chambers, just 19% (74 in total) had been certified within the last 12 months.
Cyber Essentials is a simple self-assessment accreditation process that the Government introduced in 2014. It’s designed to help UK organisations confirm they have a minimum level of cyber security protection in place. This time last year, The Bar Council and Law Society updated their joint ‘Information Security Questionnaire for All Centralised Services Provided by Chambers’ recommendation to include a reference to Cyber Essentials.
As the document is intended for law firms to use when instructing chambers for casework, the risk of not complying is de-instruction. Moreover, the UK Government mandates Cyber Essentials certification for public sector contracts and is now recommending it throughout the supply chain – making the risk for non-certified Chambers more significant.
There are, however, shoots of positivity from the study.
Researchers at Atlas Cloud were able to validate how long Cyber Essentials certifications have been held, finding that 29 out of the 74 certifications were newly acquired within the last 12 months. That represents a substantial 66% year-on-year growth rate, which comes just over twelve months after the updated guidelines were published.
Pete Watson, CEO of Atlas Cloud, offers some advice to Heads of Chambers:
“We know from experience it takes chambers longer to align with the Cyber Essentials requirements than most organisations, as self-employed members’ hardware is included in the scope. While we can transition a chamber to comply with all requirements in just a couple of months through a fully managed service, you’d be looking at six to twelve months when manually implementing the required protocols.
“When you consider the current rate of adoption, it won’t be long before chambers not already on this path will begin to miss out. My advice to anyone not yet considering Cyber Essentials is to start now.”
Pete Watson – CEO, Atlas Cloud
Atlas Cloud is a security and compliance focused managed IT services provider that works with Barristers Chambers and other law firms to lower risk while delivering an efficient end user experience. As an official Cyber Essentials certification body, you can engage the team for one-off consultancy services to enable accreditation.
Initial consultations are offered at no cost, get started by requesting your consultation today.
