On the 26^th May, we invited local businesses in Herefordshire to come and visit the Cyber Quarter – Midlands Centre for Cyber Security for a joint briefing between us and the Regional Cyber Crime Unit (RCCU) to hear a succinct update about the latest trends and threats in cyber at the moment and how SMEs can use this knowledge to further protect their business.

According to the recent Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2022, in the last 12 months, 39% of UK businesses identified a cyber-attack. Within the group of organisations reporting cyber-attacks, 31% of businesses and 26% of charities estimate they were attacked at least once a week. Additionally, just over half of businesses (54%) identified in this survey have acted in the past 12 months to identify their own potential cyber security risks.

Considering these alarming statistics, we joined up with the RCCU to deliver a presentation to businesses in the area. Jack Litman represented the RCCU, and we caught up with him afterwards to hear more about his time at the Cyber Quarter – Midlands Centre for Cyber Security.

Jack is currently a student at Birmingham City University and is working towards a bachelor’s degree in digital forensics. In September 2021, he was successful in securing an internship with the RCCU and has spent the last year representing the RCCU at various events to help deliver more of these important briefings to businesses regionally.

“I really enjoyed networking with the local businesses around the Cyber Quarter, especially in such an amazing building and venue. It was a great opportunity to talk to people and raise awareness around what the Cyber Crime unit does and give them awareness of what we do and what support they can get from law enforcement reporting routes. It was really nice to be given a speaking slot so that I could talk all this through in a more formal setting and also give the attendees some helpful cyber tips that they could take away from the event.

In my presentation, I went over a bit about the NCSC Cyber Aware campaign and the main take aways that the attendees can think about that would massively enhance their cyber resilience in both their workspace and home space. I also spoke about reporting routes as well, so not just action fraud and cyber crime, but also how they can report things like phishing emails and texts, for example.

I think that the Cyber Quarter building is a really nice workspace and I think it’s an excellent hub of cyber security knowledge and a great place for SMEs to be.”

We’d like to give a big thank you to Jack and the RCCU team for taking the time to come and speak at the Cyber Quarter and for demonstrating how the unit supports local businesses. Stay tuned for more cyber security & threat updates to come in the future!

Jack and the RCCU team will be joining us again at our upcoming ‘meet the neighbours’ family event taking place on 14^th July in collaboration with the Herefordshire & Worcestershire Chamber of Commerce.

To register for this event, please express interest via the link below:

https://hwchamber.co.uk/product/meet-the-neighbours-networking-event-3/

To see more of Jack, follow him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacklitman/

To learn more about the RCCU, click here: https://www.wmrocu.org.uk/