How to Add a Helper to Your Cyber Essentials Assessment

If you're completing your Cyber Essentials or Cyber Assurance self-assessment and need someone else in your organisation — an IT provider, a colleague, or a technical contact — to help answer questions on your behalf, the IASME assessment portal (built and hosted by Pervade Software) has a built-in feature to let you do exactly that. It's called a “Helper.”

A Helper can log in alongside you (though not at the same time — see the note below) and complete or update answers within your assessment. This is a useful option if you're not the most technical person in your business and want your IT support company or a colleague to complete the technical sections while you retain overall ownership and sign-off of the submission.

How to Add a Helper

1. Log in to the IASME portal. Go to portal.iasme.co.uk and enter your registered email address. You'll be sent a one-time passcode by email — copy this into the passcode box and click Login.

2. Open the Helpers menu. Once logged in, click the cog icon in the top right-hand corner of the screen, then select “Helpers” from the left-hand menu.

3. Invite your Helper. Enter the email address of the person you'd like to help with your assessment, then click “Invite Helper.”

4. Wait for them to accept. Your Helper will receive an email invitation. They'll need to accept it before they can access your assessment.

5. Your Helper logs in as themselves. Once accepted, your Helper logs in to the portal using their own email address and passcode (in the same way you did) and will then have access to your assessment to view and complete answers.

A Few Important Things to Know

• Only one person can be in the portal at a time. If you are logged in and working on the assessment, your Helper should not log in at the same time, and vice versa — otherwise changes may not save correctly. Make sure one of you logs out before the other logs in.

• A Helper can update answers, but they cannot submit or sign off the assessment on your behalf. Cyber Essentials requires that a senior person in your organisation (a board member, owner, or equivalent) confirms the answers are accurate before the assessment is submitted for marking.

• You can add or remove a Helper at any time using the same “Helpers” menu, right up until your assessment is submitted.

• Helpers are separate from any support you receive from us as your Certification Body — if you're on our Supported Service, we'll already be guiding you through the questions directly, and a portal Helper simply gives a named colleague or IT contact hands-on access to enter those answers.

Need a Hand?

If you're not sure who in your organisation should be your Helper, or you'd like support preparing your answers before you submit, get in touch with our team — we're happy to help.