You may have heard us say that cyberattacks can happen to any type of business regardless of its size, location, turnover or whether it’s well established or brand new. Protecting your business from cyber risks doesn’t need to be costly or complicated.

The Cyber Resilience Centre for Wales (WCRC) is here to help small businesses and SMEs by breaking things down into manageable priorities, with simple-to-follow actions that are highly effective at minimising threats.

We’re very proud to have almost 350 Welsh businesses registered as members, and this growing community includes Tai Calon Community Housing. The not-for-profit, community mutual organisation - and Blaenau Gwent’s largest social housing provider, with nearly 6,000 homes - joined this spring to bolster its cyber resilience. Head of Business Improvement and IT, Mark Davies shares the company’s membership story so far.

Showing cyber compliance is a growing requirement today

Fundamentally, we are aware of cyber security and the risks that it presents and are always looking for new ways to manage that risk. We were made aware of WCRC from two areas - via the procurement channel, where we saw that Merthyr Tydfil Council requires its partners or contractors to join or have equivalent arrangements in place. Commercially, we have seen that an increasing number of organisations are starting to require membership as a condition of working with them.

Also, one of our board members is a specialist in cyber security. He was aware of WCRC and suggested we look into it. After researching the WCRC website and seeing the range of services on offer we decided it was in our interest to become members. We also met with Danielle Healy, the WCRC’s membership and services advisor, to go through the services in more detail and this was a great benefit.

Helping us with futureproofing

As an SME, we had a reasonably good awareness of cyber security and the associated risks. It is not an area where we can afford to be complacent though and the things that attracted us to becoming part of the membership community were the range of services on offer, the very good value for money, the events and updates provided and the chance to be part of a Wales-focused organisation.

To date, we have attended a webinar which was useful, and we will be looking at subsequent projects probably involving a further vulnerability scan and assistance with business continuity. We’re looking forward to working with the WCRC and utilising more services in 2022.

To see how the WCRC can help your business with its cyber challenges, please get in touch to arrange a chat with the team about membership options and services for improved cyber resilience.