The London Cyber Resilience Centre (CRC) was officially launched yesterday, making nine such Centres that cover England and Wales, offering cyber security advice to small businesses. Each CRC is a not for profit and police-led – in the case of London, the Met Police, City of London Police and British Transport Police.
The launch event at City Hall in London Docklands heard that any business – or any of the capital’s 18,000 charities – is a potential target for cyber criminals, who may find small and medium businesses easier to target, besides as a possible way into larger targets through their supply chain.
Over the next three years, the centre aims to help support around 20,000 London businesses most vulnerable to attacks. Membership is free to get basic services such as a monthly newsletter and UK official NCSC (National Cyber Security Centre) advice; for small business owners to get more such as threat assessments and face-to-face visits and training for staff, you pay. London Mayor Sadiq Khan is spending £200,000 on the Centre’s Community Outreach work which includes the development of self-help toolkits for businesses and ‘How-To’ video guides on improving their resilience against cyber-attacks. Cyber Resilience Centres receive an annual grant from the Home Office.
The Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, Sophie Linden was among speakers at the launch. She said: “Far too many small businesses in the capital are impacted by cybercrime, with billions of pounds lost and thousands of lives impacted each year.
“Our new Cyber Resilience Centre will help businesses stay safe online and protect them from cyber criminals. This is all part of our work to build a safer, more prosperous city for everyone and I urge all businesses in London to sign-up and use the centre’s services.”
Other speakers were James Thomson, pictured, chair of the City of London Police Authority, who’s also chair of the national network of CRCs; Ben Johnson, Mayoral head of economic and business policy; Angela McLaren, who as City of London Police Commissioner is national police lead on counter-fraud and crime against business; Simon Newman, the London CRC chief executive; from the Met, Commander Catherine Roper; on the Cyber PATH scheme of building a national talent pipeline of students who staff the CRCs, Abdullah Khan; and a taker and ‘fan’ of the CRC services, Sara Crofts, chief exec of the Institute of Conservation.
Support from large businesses as ‘ambassadors‘ is welcome; Microsoft was a recent host of a gathering of all the CRCs. Chief Information Security Officer at NatWest, Chris Ulliott, said: “NatWest is proud to be an ambassador for the National Cyber Resilience Centre Group and are delighted to support the opening of London’s new Cyber Resilience Centre. The centre is working to help the capital’s business community build resilience against the very real threat of cybercrime.
“Small and medium-sized businesses are a fundamental part of the economy. As such it’s really important that these businesses are equipped with the best tools and knowledge to conduct their day-to-day business safely and securely online, which is a key priority of the Mayor of London, and we are very happy to help them do that.”
Visit www.londoncrc.co.uk.
More in the December print edition of Professional Security Magazine.
Case study one from the London CRC – security to an independent sports shop’s new website:
The Community Outreach visited an independent sports retailer who had recently launched a website, but hadn’t considered cyber risk. The CRC showed what simple steps they could take to add security, notably two-factor verification.
Case study two – a high street sandwich shop and social media security:
During its initial Community outreach work over the Summer, the CRC supported the owner of a high street sandwich shop that had their Instagram account hacked. The owner only knew when a customer flagged unusual messages being posted on their profile. When the sandwich shop owner tried to log-in to their account, he found that he had been locked out. The CRC showed the owner how to access help from Instagram and gave guidance about the security of their Instagram profile by enabling two-factor verification and setting a strong password.
