Today, (Monday 5th December) The Cyber Resilience Centre for the South East (SECRC) is pleased to announce a new partnership that will see the region’s 4 police forces (Sussex, Surrey, Thames Valley and Hampshire) work together to improve the cyber resilience of companies that supply goods and services to each force.

The partnership means that all companies seeking to embark on new contracts with the Police in the South East region will be required to join the SECRC as part of the contractual process and if they are based outside of the South East then it will be their local Cyber Resilience Centre.

In the South East region, there are just shy of 850,000 businesses registered which is the second highest in the country following the neighbouring area of London with 1,000,000. Many of these businesses will have next to no protection from cyber-attacks and will be unaware of the threat posed by cybercrime as a whole.

To help protect these businesses, the Cyber Resilience Centre for the South East was established by the Home Office to provide free simple-to-follow cyber guidance, tools and threat assessments and affordable cyber services to businesses, charities, and public sector organisations.

When it comes to cybercriminals, there’s nothing small about small businesses. If you’re open to business online, you could be open to cyber-attacks. The SECRC is led by two serving police officers and supported by academia and the commercial sector, who together work tirelessly to support SMEs.

Detective Superintendent Andy Richardson, Director of The Cyber Resilience Centre for the South East said: “This new partnership between the SECRC and the region’s four police forces is a huge step in helping to develop the cyber resilience of a large number of businesses that may not have access or funds to cover cyber security.

This project has been a key priority of mine as the Director of the SECRC as we should be leading by example and encouraging suppliers and service providers to become more secure so that each force can be confident that their data and information is being handled appropriately. Whether you are a roofing contractor on a police station or a software company developing new forensic technologies, there is a cyber threat facing you and we want to help you reduce that risk.”

The SECRC is part of a national network of centres working hard to protect the UK economy. Find your local centre, here.