Through our Community Ambassador (CA) blog series we are getting the opportunity to speak with our CA members to understand more about why they signed up to the Cyber Resilience Centre for Wales (WCRC) membership programme and what benefits it’s bringing their local business community.

In our second instalment, we hear from FOR Cardiff’s Business Crime Reduction Manager, Ian Tumelty to learn more about how being a Community Ambassador member is assisting its own membership base, how it’s providing added value as well as the support it’s brought so far.

FOR Cardiff is a business improvement district (BID) that represents 750+ businesses in Cardiff city centre which fund us to enhance the experience of the capital and deliver projects that benefit the business community. Since 2016, we have invested over £7.5 million into improving Cardiff through projects like the ‘Cardiff Against Business Crime’ crime reduction partnership, free member training, city centre cleansing and award-winning events.

• What prompted you to become a Community Ambassador member?

As a business improvement district (BID), FOR Cardiff works hard to deliver improvements for city centre businesses which fund us, and we were interested in being a part of the WCRC cyber community to support our member businesses with developing their, and our own, cyber resilience.

• Have you noticed an increase in the level of cybercrime activity over the course of the last year eg. receiving more phishing emails?

As an organisation FOR Cardiff has certainly experienced an increase in phishing emails and our members are also reporting a noticeable rise in this type of cyber-attack. We are pleased to have raised their awareness in this respect and have found that these emails are often from attackers purporting to be members of staff, mostly management, asking for us to urgently contact them via a WhatsApp link.

• What benefits have you experienced since joining as a WCRC Community Ambassador?

We have benefited from the discount we receive as a member for the Cyber PATH services such as the first step web assessments, which looks at our websites for possible vulnerabilities. There is also the huge benefit of the in-person event for our staff to discuss cyber resilience and why it’s so important. This has definitely helped us to identify and report suspicious communications protecting our business from cyber-attack.

• Has your organisation increased its understanding of cyber security since becoming a member?

We have certainly improved our understanding of cyber security since becoming a member which in turn mitigates the real threat to us and our member businesses of serious disruption and reputational damage to our organisation’s operation.

• In your own words why would you recommend joining the WCRC as a Community Ambassador.

We recommend joining the WCRC as a Community Ambassador as it tops up the benefits of the free core membership and allows us to use the WCRC logo on our website as well as listing us as a community ambassador on the WCRC website.  This shows that we are effective practitioners in cyber awareness and increases the trust and confidence in us by our business members.  

We will be finding out more from our other ambassadors, Corassure and Exercise 3 so stay tuned…

Learn more about becoming a Community Ambassador and if you’re organisation is interested in signing up for this membership programme, please get in touch.