Siemens and North West Cyber Resilience Centre host free webinar on industrial cybersecurity for Oldham SMEs

Siemens and the North West Cyber Resilience Centre (NWCRC) will host a free industrial cybersecurity webinar for Oldham SMEs on Friday (July 30).

The online seminar will tackle cyber threats affecting industrial systems and what can be done to mitigate the risks they pose.

Experts from both Siemens and the NWCRC, a partnership between the police, the private sector and academia, will address the many challenges that SMEs face in cyberattacks and how they can protect their organisations and manage their cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

The webinar, which runs from 9 to 10am, will cover:

A case study showing the effects of a ransomware attack and best practice response

How can I protect what I can’t see? What assets do I have?

How do I manage my Cyber Security vulnerabilities?

What threats are there to my production? (Security of resources, people and my facilities)

What is Defence in Depth?

To register for the webinar, click here

The webinar will also be available to watch on-demand for those registered.

The NWCRC (formerly known as the Cyber Resilience Centre for Greater Manchester (CRCGM)) is a not-for-profit venture between Greater Manchester Police and Manchester Digital, an independent trade organisation for the city region’s digital and tech businesses.

It was rebranded in July to expand its valuable work to help protect the business community from online crime and support small businesses across Cumbria, Lancashire, Merseyside, Cheshire and Greater Manchester.

Grace Hulse, Detective Inspector and Head of Cyber and Innovation at the NWCRC will be presenting at the webinar. 

She said: “At NWCRC we are continually innovating to support businesses in their fight against crime.

"We partner with a wide range of experts and work closely with law enforcement agencies, like the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) and the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit (NWROCU) to provide accessible, consistent, government-backed support and training to organisations of all sizes.”

Siemens, which has its UK headquarters in Manchester, is a leader in offering industrial cybersecurity and has an IEC 62443 certification, the highest industry standard globally for industrial cybersecurity.

It is also the founder of the Charter of Trust, launched at the 2018 Munich Security Conference and which now has multinational corporations such as AES, Airbus, Allianz, Atos, Cisco, Daimler, IBM and Dell Technologies among many other companies as signatories.

Ben Caley, Business Development Manager, Siemens Industrial Security Services, will be presenting Siemens’ case studies and sharing best practice at the webinar.

He said: “We are delighted to be part of the webinar to showcase to the region's SME businesses how cyberattacks can be mitigated.

"We have been working with cybersecurity in our own cutting-edge factories, our experience in dealing with hackers and other threats comes from first-hand experience in industrial security and we are happy to share these experiences with industry peers.”

The NWCRC aims to help businesses fight cyber attacks and in 2020, at the outbreak of the pandemic, launched a free three-month membership for any business in the region with up to 100 employees.

The initiative came after Action Fraud reported a 400% increase in COVID-19 related crimes and scams in March that year, coinciding with the beginning of lockdowns.

The NWCRC offers its members tailored advice, regular news updates and useful tools to help businesses improve their cyber resilience.

Siemens offers specialist consultation for business leaders on how they handle the two-fold challenge of safety and security and understanding the increased exposure to cyber risks in the current model of hybrid working and working from home is intensified. 

According to the cybersecurity Breaches Survey 20211 four in ten businesses (39%) and a quarter of charities (26%) report having cybersecurity breaches or attacks in the last 12 months like previous years.

This is higher among medium businesses (65%), large businesses (64%) and high-income charities (51%). Phishing remains one of the most common threat vectors.

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