The North West Cyber Resilience Centre (NWCRC) are proud to announce we have reached the halfway point in supporting 150 SME businesses from across Greater Manchester as part of a free cyber resilience programme. We've now helped 150 SMEs in building resilience against the ever-increasing threat of cyber fraud and cyber attacks.
The centre launched the Business Resilience Programme last year with funding to support 300 SMEs across Greater Manchester to access training and resources aimed at protecting their businesses and educating business owners against cyber attacks.
Detective Superintendent Neil Jones, managing director of the NWCRC, said: “We’re really pleased to see so many businesses take up the offer of supported cyber-training to help them fight back against this growing threat."
“Any type of cyber attack can affect a business’s ability to run its operations, and can easily spell the end of a business. There are numerous ways that business owners can protect themselves from this attack and train their employees to be aware of the multiple ways criminals can target businesses."
“Every single company should run regular cyber health checks as a standard procedure – much like having an emergency plan for fire – and ensure their employees have proper training.”
康纳格尼, CEO of the Gurse Collective, was one of the first businesses to complete the programme and said: “All of our staff received security awareness training delivered by the centre, providing them with the skills to identify, challenge and report security threats, complementing our own in-house training.”
“We now also receive regular intelligence briefings from the NWCRC which, alongside other open-source intelligence, support us in carrying out regular threat assessments.”
The Government’s Cyber Security Breaches report for 2022 showed us that cybercrime affects over 39% of UK businesses, with 31% of businesses being attacked at least once a week. While the average estimated cost of cyberattacks in the last 12 months has fallen to £4,200, for medium and large businesses, the figure rises to £19,400.
There are now less than 150 spots left with the Cyber Resilience Centre's programme which is scheduled to run till August 2023.
The CRC’s Business Resilience programme includes training for two employees on protecting a business from cybercrime, multiple resources plus one-to-one consultation with cyber security experts. The funding comes from money seized from criminals under the Proceeds of Crime Act to fund crime reduction activities, and the programme has been commissioned by Greater Manchester Police (GMP).
To find out more about this programme, and to apply, visit: http://www.nwcrc.co.
