Worcestershire County Councils Be Cyber Secure programme is a grant fund that has helped organisations in Worcestershire to improve their cyber security and grow their business.

One business that was recently supported by the Be Cyber Secure Programme was a Worcestershire security risk management company.

The Challenge

In order to grow their business, the company needed to access certain procurement systems and portals to be notified of new contracts available and to bid for work with major corporations in the defence and security sector. However, access to these sites is restricted to businesses that meet specific accreditations around cyber security and a considerable upgrade of IT equipment would be needed by the business to achieve these accreditations and gain access to potential new customers.

The Solution

The local company successfully applied for a match funded grant through the Be Cyber Secure Programme to enable the required capital investment and to purchase consultancy support to achieve the necessary accreditation. The grant provided 45% of the project costs and with the help of the funding they were able to upgrade key aspects of their IT infrastructure, including investment in a specific new server required to enable encryption, at a cost of more than £15,000.

Once the necessary IT upgrades were completed the SME worked with the consultancy and achieved ISO 27001 accreditation at the end of summer 2019.

The Results

As well as allowing the funding recipient to achieve ISO 27001, the Be Cyber Secure Grant was crucial in helping them to protect their business, making them more resilient as far as their own cyber security is concerned.

Through gaining ISO 27001 accreditation, the business has now been accepted onto a major portal which will give them access to the clients that they wish to contract with. This portal cannot simply be applied for; businesses must meet specific requirements and be invited to access the portal and procurement system.

The Be Cyber Secure programme has provided the opportunity for this Worcestershire business to take the next step in achieving long term growth of revenue, by gaining access to lucrative markets to offer their services too. They commented that the process had been extremely worthwhile – the Be Cyber Secure team had been very helpful throughout, making every step simple, from application, through to a quick turnover of funds, which was of particular importance for this very small business.

About Be Cyber Secure

The Be Cyber Secure Programme, funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), Worcestershire and District Councils, closed in September 2019 having supported 78 local SMEs with capital and revenue-based cyber security grants of up to £20,000.

To find out more about the full range of support programmes available in Worcestershire please contact Worcestershire Business Central on 01905 677888 or visit www.business-central.co.uk/.

To download the case study, click here for page one and here for page two