Today is a very proud day at CyberSmart. In a time where we could all do with cheer, we’ve got great news. We’ve won UK Innovative Vendor of the Year at the 2020 CompTIA UK Spotlight Awards.

Who is CompTIA?

CompTIA is a global not-for-profit trade association, promoting excellence in the tech industry. As part of CompTIA’s mission to elevate the best the tech world has to offer, it hosts an annual award ceremony celebrating outstanding contributions from the previous year.

What’s the award for?

CompTIA’s Innovative Vendor of the Year award is open to any tech business that has demonstrated innovation – whether within their own business, working with clients or impacting the wider industry. 

For 2020, the awards had an extra element. Candidates who have shown leadership in their community or industry during the pandemic have been given special consideration.

We’re honoured to have won Innovative Vendor of the Year. Our mission has always been to address the ‘cyber privilege gap’ between large enterprises who can afford the best in cybersecurity and SMEs who are often left behind. 

The COVID-19 crisis has made our work more important than ever. As many SMEs switch to permanent remote working, they’ve become a prime target for cybercriminals. And good cyber hygiene and access to cybersecurity knowledge have never been more vital to protecting small businesses. 

To win an award which recognises our own small contribution to a safer digital world is an honour. But it’s also a great motivation to double down on our efforts in 2021. 

We’d like to thank our backers, everyone at CyberSmart who made this nomination possible and, of course, small businesses everywhere. 

Are you a start-up looking to improve cybersecurity but not sure where to begin? Start by getting certified in Cyber Essentials, the UK government scheme that covers all the fundamentals of cyber hygiene.

We’re proud to announce CyberSmart has been nominated in the UK Innovative Vendor of the Year category at the 2020 CompTIA UK Spotlight Awards.

Who doesn’t love an awards ceremony? The sense of camaraderie with the other nominees. The tension. And the chance to celebrate this year’s greatest innovations in a room full of like-minded people. 

So we’re delighted to have been invited to the 2020 Comp TIA Awards. CompTIA is a global not-for-profit trade association, promoting excellence and standards within the tech industry.

What’s the award for?

The Innovative Vendor of the Year award is open to any tech business demonstrating innovation or an approach that has transformed their organisation, a client’s, or the wider industry. For 2020, candidates who have shown leadership in their community or organisation during the COVID-19 crisis will be given special consideration. 

We’re particularly excited to be nominated in the innovation category. The COVID-19 crisis has brought the importance of good cyber hygiene into sharp focus. With many small businesses working remotely, cyber threats are on the rise. And these conditions have made our mission to help SMEs better protect themselves more crucial than ever. 

What does the future hold?

We started CyberSmart with the goal of innovating a much-neglected part of the UK economy: cybersecurity for SMEs. This nomination is confirmation that we’re on the right track. 

But we won’t stop here. We’re determined to be a force for good in the world. We won’t rest until good cyber hygiene is part of every SME’s daily routine – much like brushing your teeth or washing your hands. 

We’d like to thank our backers, everyone at CyberSmart who made this nomination possible and, of course, our customers.

Are you a start-up looking to improve cybersecurity but not sure where to begin? Start by getting certified in Cyber Essentials, the UK government scheme that covers all the fundamentals of cyber hygiene.

Today is a big day for CyberSmart. 

After months of preparation, countless workshops and a fair few late nights, we’re delighted to announce the launch of our new branding and website.

What’s changing? 

Everything. We’re unveiling a brand new look, website and vision to take us forward into the next stage of our development. Here’s CyberSmart CEO and co-founder, Jamie Akhtar on what the rebrand means:

“Our mission has been and always will be to make security accessible for every organisation. We want to see a world where every business, no matter how small, can be cyber secure. Our new branding aspires to reflect this.” 

Why the rebrand? 

The last few months have really brought home the importance of good cyber hygiene. With businesses from Tyneside to Truro working from home due to COVID-19, it’s never been more crucial that everyone has access to the tools they need to stay cyber secure.

So, it’s time our branding reflected our vision, as our Chief Growth Officer, Sam Soares explains:

“We have gone beyond the look, the logo, the colours. The CyberSmart brand has been reimagined from the ground up, looking into where we are heading in the future. COVID has ushered us into a new world- one where proper cyber hygiene is no longer an option for businesses. Our new vision is to build a safe and healthy digital society.” 

We couldn’t have done it without our friends over at Outfly, a pioneering design agency who, like us, specialise in helping SMEs achieve their vision.

What does this mean for our customers? 

For the time being, the way you access the CyberSmart Dashboard won’t change. And neither will the functionality within it.

However, we’ve got big plans for the future and the rebrand is only the beginning. We’ll be revealing more over the next few months, so keep your eyes peeled for news.

In the meantime, if you haven’t seen the branding, take a look around our new site.

Demand from SMBs for certification drives growth to 300% per annum

We are delighted to announce that CyberSmart has raised £5.5 million which will be used to fund the growth of the company. This will enable us to continue to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to protect themselves against cyber threats in an ever-evolving technological landscape.  The Series A funding round was led by venture capital firm IQ Capital and a group of tech-savvy individual investors.

The lockdown and shift to online working patterns means small businesses are prioritising security more than ever. CyberSmart has seen a massive increase in demand from SMEs to protect their businesses with a revenue increase of 300% over the last twelve months.

Here’s what our CEO, investors, and partners have to say about this exciting news:

Jamie Akhtar, CEO CyberSmart says, “We are delighted to have closed our series “A” funding round with £5.5 million to fund our next stage of growth. Our investors have seen that we have built a great technology and also a great team. The SME market has not been easy to protect until now, and business owners have so many issues to deal with they often wait until it is too late, losing all their customer data or even cash in a cyber-attack. We take all the effort out from a business becoming secure, so it’s not as painful, time-consuming, or as expensive as one might think. People can have effective, comprehensive security and risk-reduction from a team that is there to support them through the challenges of transforming into a digital business.” 

Kerry Baldwin, Partner IQ Capital says, “What we like about CyberSmart was the automated solution to secure companies and make them compliant with certifications like Cyber Essentials, and that it reaches the underserved SME market that we felt just wasn’t being protected. When we see signs that a company has found product market fit, is way ahead in hitting its targets and is finding innovative partnerships with managed security service providers to deliver massive market penetration then we know it is a great time to invest and secure our position.  In the current situation there has never been a greater need for making sure that remote teams and small teams working from home are protected in an automated, effective affordable way.   Obviously the UK has got Cyber Essentials, but other countries have other similar certification requirements, so they solve a problem that is faced in many countries so this company will be going global as soon as possible.

Przemek Pardel, Startup Acceleration Programs Lead Europe, Google says, “CyberSmart is working hard to provide clear and simple cyber security solutions to small and medium enterprises across the globe. They have shown great determination to better their technical capabilities and further scale their product, which has been evident from their participation at our accelerator program for cyber security startups and their recent Series A funding success. We are excited to see how they will evolve and grow after they graduate from the accelerator.”

Joanna, Program Lead at CyLon says, “Great product, dedicated team and seamless execution. These three aspects of CyberSmart put together create an exceptional combination with plenty of room to grow in the future. We at CyLon as proud early adopters of CyberSmart can’t imagine our organisation without it.”

Akhtar continued, “I set up CyberSmart was after witnessing first-hand how SMEs suffer data breaches and realising that hundreds of thousands of businesses were suffering cyberattacks.  When we started, 74% of SMEs had a breach that year, if 74% of buildings caught fire, there would be fire stations on every corner.  The technology is now there that enables us to automate protecting SMEs and by implementing a cloud-based platform that is both simple and cost effective to deploy, backed by a Cyber Essentials Certification. Businesses have gone through two stages, the first phase was rapid, digital transformation which was all about connectivity, communication, basically getting your team and your company back online remotely, or online remotely.

Phase two is now. We have spent all these years building our secure, corporate infrastructure or drilling into people these secure working practices, but that has all gone out the window because everyone is now working remotely. The new focus is on how to secure teams working out of the office. So that’s the big wave which we are seeing now that has been driving demand from all types of companies. Because our technology is automated, certified, comprehensive and can be deployed, managed and monitored remotely, it’s an ideal solution.

CyberSmart are working with many different types of channel partners. This represents a good opportunity to reach the SMBs. For partners there are many benefits- an income stream that also prevents churn, it makes customers more sticky. Most importantly, it makes customers more secure which helps with cyber hygiene across the whole UK business supply chain.”

The Cyber Essentials certification is recommended by the ICO and Federation for Small Businesses, and it’s required of suppliers to central and local government. Implementing its security controls can mitigate up to 99% of cyber attacks.

Akhtar continued, “Technology and automation are the way forward. By deploying a smart application that runs on all the devices no matter where people are or which device they are using, we can ensure security 24/7. This is what we mean by automated compliance. We offer a simple path to certification, but we also make sure you are compliant with that certification every day. The application essentially does all the technical bits, so people don’t have to be cyber security experts themselves. 

Chris Ensor from NCSC said: “The NCSC is proud of the success achieved by CyberSmart, which was one of the first participants in our NCSC Cyber Accelerator programme. It has won a deserved reputation for producing innovative software and for encouraging businesses to seek Cyber Essentials certification.  

“The Accelerator programme is currently seeking new start-ups and we would encourage anyone with fresh ideas to apply and help us continue to drive innovation in UK cyber security.”

About CyberSmart

Born out of the GCHQ / NCSC Cyber Accelerator in 2017, CyberSmart was created by a group of forward-thinking security experts, who noticed that many companies needed to secure themselves and achieve information security standards, but ultimately found the process too complicated or were limited by financial or human resources.

We believe that every organisation should be able to easily comply with recognised standards and protect their data and infrastructure. Through making security accessible, we have achieved tremendous growth and enabled thousands of users to protect themselves against cyber attack.

Inside the CyberSmart customer support experience with Francis Kontor, our Technical Support Lead.

One of the things we are most proud of at CyberSmart is the feedback we get from our customers about the personal support we offer them. We work hard at it because we know how important it is for our clients. We are working with small businesses, some with only a few employees and no real IT staff or expertise.

The world of cybersecurity can look daunting from the outside and our job is to make the process of protection as easy and understandable as possible. We do this in a few ways.

We get all kinds of requests from our customers and over time we’ve had to expand the skillsets we use to respond to them. That has meant creating both a general customer support team and a more technical one for product-specific queries. During the course of my career, I have noticed the misconception end users have in regards to what technical supports role is within an organisation and what customer support role is and if they are the same.

Of course, from a customer experience perspective, these appear as one and the same. After all, customers don’t mind who they speak to about their issue, they just want it resolved as quickly as possible so they can move on with their day.

In this article, we give a bit of a behind the scenes look at how we process customer queries at CyberSmart so we can make sure the right expert is addressing the right questions as quickly as possible.

Customer Support vs Technical Support

Our customer support is split into two main areas: Customer Success and Technical Support.

Customer Success are the friendly team answering our phones and online chats. They do the initial fielding of questions and offer support on everything non-technical within the non-technical customer experience (payment, planning, general questions).

Any questions relating to our product (how to install it, how to configure, etc.) are answered by the Technical Support team in order for our customers to get the best value out of our product.

First-line support

When a customer gets in touch, the first level of support they receive is from the Customer Success team. They manage our FAQs page and knowledge base and use it as a tool to help customers find the answers they need for common queries. First-line support handles 40%-60% of end-user queries. They have a basic understanding of the product and the business but they aren’t technicians so if there’s a question they can’t answer about the product, they pass it on to the second-line of support.

Second-line support (Complex Queries/Problems)
When a ticket is escalated to second line support this usually means the query or problem requires more in-depth technical knowledge of the product.

Third-line support (Bespoke support)
Third-line support largely deals with tickets that require a bespoke solution for the organisation which is experiencing technical difficulties with our product. This means we might work directly with the engineering team to build a solution to a problem for a customer. After all, if they have that need, it’s likely others do too.

What is Technical Support?

Technical support is what product-focused organisations like CyberSmart use to help our MSPs & direct partners get the most out of our product. Typically, we receive queries via live chat, emails, or phone calls. We resolve technical issues such as installation (PC, MAC & mobile), dashboard login errors, and other technical issues that are causing headaches for our customers.

A third-line of support question might be something around need to do a mass installation of our app to many sites but not knowing how to configure their RMM. If we got a request like this from an MSP, we would work to build them a custom solution for mass installation that they could use for our apps and others.

In summary, CyberSmart’s support team is not a call centre stocked with rote answers to simple questions. We also have the capacity to help the vision of our customers come true by making the CyberSmart product fit their needs.

Cyber security is essential for business today but the process of protection doesn’t have to be difficult, time-consuming, or expensive. CyberSmart was built for non-technical businesses to serve as a full cyber security team in one product with top-notch customer support. Start protecting your business today.

We’ve always had a strong work-from-home culture here at CyberSmart. We’ve got team members based all over the globe and encourage staff in London to work from wherever they work best. We are, in many respects, ‘remote by design.’

But this week, for the first time, we took the step along with businesses across the world to send our staff home and go fully remote in light of the spread of the coronavirus. 

As we make our way through this first week, hunkered down in our kitchens and living rooms, we’ve implemented a few new office rituals to help keep up team morale. Here are a few of the practices we’ve been using to stay sane:

Stand-up and stand-down meetings

Working from home can be disorienting. You’ve got dogs begging for walks and dishes demanding to be washed while a never ending stream of work alerts is pinging from your computer screen. The line between life and work can be very difficult to see. 

To combat this ambiguity, we have implemented two standing meetings at the start and end of every day. These offer a clear marker for the beginning and end of the workday and provide an opportunity to share priorities and struggles, and to make sure we all know where we’re heading together.

Using a variety of communication channels

We haven’t changed our communication channels since transitioning to a remote setup, but we’ve quickly realised how valuable they are. Obviously, instant messaging is important in the absence of face-to-face contact, but having different messaging channels for distinct purposes is also key. 

We use Slack for real-time work messages and WhatsApp for generally aligning the team. Project management software like Monday.com or Asana provide a space for organising and scheduling tasks.

Obviously, instant messaging is important in the absence of face-to-face contact, but having different messaging channels for distinct purposes is also key.

Shared lunches

Did you know the word ‘companion’ comes from the Latin roots of ‘com-’ meaning ‘together’, and ‘panis’ meaning ‘bread’? Sharing a meal- breaking bread together- is an age-old bonding experience for us humans and our regular office team lunches were something we knew we would miss when we went our separate ways. We use Google Meet or Slack so we can dial in once a week to see each other’s faces as we devour our respective fridge leftovers.

Tavern

Every Thursday afternoon we do something called Smart Culture and Smart Work in the office. We grab a beer from the fridge or make a cuppa and talk about our company culture, our values, and the way we work. It’s a place where we as employees can help shape the development of the business.

Since we have gone remote this time has become precious. It may be the only opportunity we have in a week to reflect together on the way that we work (something that’s changing shape everyday). We have strong core values but are we living them? Who did a fantastic job this week? What’s blocking our communication between teams? What can we change to support one another better? 

Social (distance) bonding

As with team lunches, our monthly team socials have also been forced into the virtual world. Maintaining a sense of camaraderie while apart is critical right now, so we are experimenting with ways to continue to bond across the void. Online games and virtual farming are on the cards, but we’ll have to see what the next few weeks bring. 

Has your team gone remote to combat the spread of coronavirus? What are you doing to keep up spirits and ensure business continuity? As an information security company, we urge you to be aware of the vulnerability to security breaches that can come with remote working. To help address this issue, we have set up a special page for small businesses focused on resiliency during COVID-19. There you can find more information on best practices and free, downloadable checklists and policy packs for your own use.

As the Covid-19 virus outbreak continues to escalate across the planet, I would like to update you on how the situation is being addressed at CyberSmart. 

First and foremost, our thoughts are with all who have been affected by coronavirus, especially the ones who have contracted the virus and to their families that support them. Our team wishes you a speedy recovery.

Our team, customers and partners

The safety of our employees, their families, and our partners and our clients, is our greatest priority. That is why we have transitioned the business to fully remote operations, effective as of Monday 16th March. 

Remote working is a practice that has been tried, tested and encouraged since the beginning of our business – we are “remote by design”. With team members across the globe, the ability to work remotely has always been an integral part of our business continuity strategy, and we are grateful for that now. This experience allows us to continue delivering our services to the highest standard, and uninterrupted, even in unprecedented times like these. 

We will be releasing these very practices we follow, alongside tips from our team, on our new dedicated small business resilience page .

We hope this information helps our customers, partners and any other members of the business community to take on remote working safely and productively.

Business as usual

CyberSmart’s daily operations are carrying on unaffected and we foresee no impact on our operations. With information security at the core of what we do, our team is particularly well-prepared to maintain business as usual, and continue to serve our customers with the highest quality of service.

Because of our remote capabilities, we are now delivering all certification fully remotely. This includes Cyber Essentials Plus which is normally conducted by an in-person auditor. However, our team of assessors is able to use the CyberSmart app to remotely test all devices who have it installed and help you achieve certification. Remote audits can be conducted regardless of if your team is in the office or working at home. We support both company provided and users own devices (BYOD) so all situations are catered for. As always, we commit to rapid turnarounds – we will get you certified in as little as 24 hours for Cyber Essentials and 7 days for Cyber Essentials Plus. 

Be aware of your security

I’d like to urge our customers and the public about the importance of cybersecurity to businesses right now as we are seeing an increase in opportunistic people using these ambiguous times to make gains for themselves through phishing and cyber breaches. 

We urge you to take a look at our content for all the tips to make your business safe and, should you have questions, please contact our team. We are here to use our in-house expertise to aid and advise, free of charge.

We urge you to take a look at our content for all the tips to make your business safe and, should you have questions, please contact our team. We are here to use our in-house expertise to aid and advise, free of charge.

CyberSmart is here to help

These are unprecedented, challenging times and I believe we will only make it through by bringing the business community together and supporting each other. As we become more socially distant, it is more important than ever that we stay connected. 

Please feel free to reach out to me and our team on hello@cybersmart.co.uk if there’s anything you think we can support with.

Stay positive, stay healthy and remember – together we are stronger.

Jamie Akhtar

Cyber Essentials has gone from strength to strength since its inception and is an important element of the NCSC’s mission to “make the UK one of the safest places to live and do business online”.

The success of the Cyber Essentials scheme led the NCSC to the decision that the scheme must evolve to meet the cybersecurity challenges of the future and continue its successful journey to protect businesses up and down the country. So, what should expect from Cyber Essentials in 2020?

2020 and IASME’s partnership appointment

IASME, one of the UK’s leading cyber certification bodies, has been appointed as the Cyber Essentials partner for NCSC from 1 April 2020. So what does this mean?

Before 1st April 2020: The five current accreditation bodies and their associated certification bodies are able to issue Cyber Essentials certificates as before. The scheme will remain in its current form until the end of March.

After 1st April 2020: Only certification bodies associated with IASME will be able to issue certifications. The CyberSmart platform is aligned with IASME and will continue to allow you to achieve and re-certify for Cyber Essentials certification.

The NCSC has made the following statements:

• there will be an introduction of an expiry date on certificates (12 months)
• costs will remain accessible and affordable
• there are no plans to change the technical standard

CyberSmart Active Protect is fully aligned with the accreditation body IASME and will allow you to achieve Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus certification today and renewal. We will always maintain support for the latest standard and keep ahead of the changes so you don’t have to. With streamlined renewals, we’ll remind you and automatically pre-populate the questionnaire each year ready for certification – prompting you for any additional information required.

Looking to improve your cybersecurity but not sure where to begin? Start by getting certified in Cyber Essentials, the UK government scheme that covers all the fundamentals of cyber hygiene.

CyberSmart took part in this year’s StartupGrind Eurasia Connect event, hosted in Tbilisi, Georgia. The event, part of StartupGrind,  the largest independent startup community, was aimed at bringing together world-class startups, founders and investors to look at exploring the frontier markets of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

It was great to be invited to the event and have the opportunity to take onto the main stage to discuss CyberSmart but also to inspire the adoption of essential cybersecurity measures to secure Georgia, a country at the epicentre of trade, culture and geopolitical interest, dating all the way back to the Silk Road days. 

Aiming to inspire

At CyberSmart we continue to grow the capabilities of our technology, not only to secure businesses and their supply chains but now with the added potential to support an entire nation with the design, deployment and enforcement of information security capabilities. During the event, CyberSmart presented certOS™, our certification operating system, creating the capability for nations to design, deliver and enforce information security standards.

Our main stage session and indeed all the networking opportunities were filled with information and education surrounding how cyber threats are all around us but there are solutions to thwart them, starting from the basics of cybersecurity for consumers and businesses. 

‘We are very grateful to StartupGrind, GITA, DIT and the British embassy for providing us with the opportunity to help to make the world a safer place.’ said Thomas S. Head of partnerships at CyberSmart.

Thank you 

StartupGrind did a great job of hosting one of the largest startup events in the world. The team approached this challenge with exemplary professionalism and unparalleled hospitality. For CyberSmart this event was key to demonstrate its capability to support governments on their missions to secure their nations against global cyber threats, connect to international investors and to ultimately give back to the wider ecosystem. 

Thank you to StartupGrind, DIT and government stakeholders from both Georgia and the UK.

We are very happy to announce that CyberSmart Active Protect is now available in Starling’s Business Marketplace, launching in the brand new category of Security.

Starling’s approach to business banking hasn’t gone unnoticed and is experiencing exponential growth, already with 65’000 customers and a target of 450’000 by 2023, as well as winning “Best Business Banking Provider” at the British Bank Awards 2019. The challenger bank is on a mission to make business banking accessible, with a simple, seamless experience for SMEs, very much like CyberSmart’s approach to cybersecurity and compliance.

CyberSmart and  Starling share the compelling vision to transform their industries, making accessibility, trust and agility a core part of their offerings. Today marks another step towards that journey by bringing financial health and business health into a single view within the Starling app.

The inclusion of CyberSmart Active Protect in the business marketplace, allows Starling’s business customers to take their cybersecurity and compliance to the next level, with a seamless registration process, straight from the Starling app. CyberSmart Active Protect makes it possible for Starling’s business customers to more easily achieve cybersecurity in line with government cybersecurity standards such as Cyber Essentials, protect and ensure compliance across all their company’s devices 24/7 and mitigate 99.3% of cyber threats.

“We’re very excited to be bringing CyberSmart Active Protect to the Starling business marketplace. From the beginning of CyberSmart, our focus has been on protecting and empowering SMEs. They are often left behind when it comes to cybersecurity and compliance, due to the complexity and high fees. We think everyone deserves to protect their data and reputation. CyberSmart will allow Starling business customers to secure their business, get government certifications and achieve continuous compliance, affordably and with minimum effort. The synergy between Starling’s and CyberSmart approach to empower SMEs makes our companies working together, a very exciting and beneficial partnership.” – Jamie Akhtar, CEO, CyberSmart

Starling business customers can now add CyberSmart Active Protect directly from the Starling Marketplace, should you have any questions, our team is here to help, just click on our live chat or contact us.