Saving 84% of manual effort: Automating Cyber Essentials readiness
By centralizing data and automating key compliance metrics, a global energy management firm cut Cyber Essentials prep time from six months to just three. The security team freed up analysts, reduced manual effort by 84%, and gained continuous visibility to stay audit-ready year-round.
The challenge
Recent updates to the UK Government’s Cyber Essentials requirements have raised the bar for vulnerability management. Organizations must now:
- Manage supported software vulnerabilities, not just end-of-life risks
- Apply critical and high-risk updates within 14 days of release
- Use automated tools or scans to identify known vulnerabilities
For a global energy management firm, this shift required a step-change in operations. The security team had to ensure timely patching of critical or high vulnerabilities and maintain continuous visibility into detections, patch status, and evidence of compliance.
However, there was a major obstacle: the lack of a unified view across assets, users, and vulnerabilities. Disconnected data made it nearly impossible to validate ownership, remediation status, and SLA adherence. Vulnerability management became a tangled, manual and reactive process – slowing response times and introducing compliance risk. Preparing for their annual Cyber Essentials assessment took 3 analysts 6 months of intensive work.
The pain: Operational drag and compliance risk
The organization faced three core issues:
- Slow, reactive compliance: 6 months to prep to meet annual certification.
- Manual workload: 3 full-time team members dedicated 20 hours per week each
- Fragmented data: asset and vulnerability data spread across multiple tools, requiring error-prone manual reconciliation.
The solution
To address these challenges, the firm implemented Panaseer’s Continuous Controls Monitoring platform – streamlining Cyber Essentials compliance and broader cyber risk governance.
Key capabilities included:
Unified Asset Visibility:
Panaseer automatically aggregates, normalizes, and cleans data from their existing tools, providing complete visibility of assets, identities, and associated vulnerabilities.
- Entra ID – 87% coverage improvement
- Microsoft Defender – 58% coverage improvement
- Intune – 72% coverage improvement
- JAMF – 57% coverage improvement
- Jira ITSM – 45% inventory improvement
SLA tracking and trending:
Vulnerability SLAs, an area not well-supported in Microsoft Defender – are now tracked in Panaseer. The team can monitor remediation performance over time, with clear timelines and an understanding that perfect remediation isn’t realistic, but SLA adherence is achievable.
This resulted in a 64% reduction in the average age of exploitable and patchable detections
Ownership mapping and accountability:
Devices and vulnerabilities are mapped to responsible users and teams. The cyber GRC team is now building live dashboards for stakeholder self-service reporting, eliminating the need for manual updates or last-minute data hunts.
Data sources
Entra ID
Microsoft Defender
Microsoft Intune
Jamf
Jira
Cyber Control Domains
Device Inventory
Vulnerability Management
Endpoint Protection
The outcome: Faster, leaner, and proactive compliance
The team saved 84% of the manual effort and halved the reporting timeline - freeing up resources and accelerating compliance.
The team achieved a step-change in efficiency and control, enabling the organization to shift to a proactive compliance model with impressive results.
Timeline cut in half
Cyber Essentials readiness work dropped from 6 months to 3 months, including 1 month for planning and scoping.
84% less manual effort
Compliance activities now require just one person working part-time for three months – freeing up 2 additional analysts to work on higher-value tasks.
Clear accountability
The organization now has end-to-end traceability across assets, users, and vulnerabilities. Ownership is defined and transparent.
Additional wins
Gaining this valuable time back, has enabled the team to
- Quarterly compliance cadence: Instead of a once-a-year push, the team now maintains a consistent state of readiness.
- Executive insight: Risk Committee meetings now include cyber GRC dashboards for clear visibility into key metrics for data-driven decision making.
- Scalable GRC function: The cyber GRC team no longer spends time gathering data – they validate and communicate insights, while accountable control owners access metrics directly.
Conclusion
Panaseer helped transform the firm’s compliance posture – from a burdensome, reactive process to a streamlined, proactive function. By centralizing data, automating metrics, and creating clear accountability, the organization isn’t just checking boxes; it’s building a sustainable approach to risk and regulatory readiness.
Get started with Panaseer
Find out how to improve your security posture management using Continuous Controls Monitoring.
Our team can give you a tailored demo of the Panaseer platform, including the metrics and dashboards that enable you to prioritize resources and accelerate remediation.