Manor Royal’s Immigration Consultancy firm, The Westwood Organisation (TWO), has been working with The South East Cyber Resilience Service to train and update their staff about cyber threats as part of their preparation for Cyber Essentials certification.
TWO work with employers, education providers and individuals in all areas of immigration work. Founder and Director Ian Westwood, a former immigration chief, set up the business over twenty years ago to provide niche consultancy services focused on immigration advice, training and consultancy.
Ian, attended the BID AGM networking event where guest speaker Katy Bourne, Police and Crime Commissioner for Sussex, was talking about cyber security. Ian took the opportunity to ask a question about what businesses could and should do to become more cyber resilient. Fortuitously, Detective Superintendent Patrick Milford, Director at the South East Cyber Resilience Centre, was in the room and managed to catch up with Ian during the networking session. Patrick arranged for him and Detective Inspector Chris White, South East CRC's Head of Cyber and Innovation, to visit The Westwood Organisation to explore how they could work together to make the company more resilient in the future.
TWO’s work involves the handling of large amounts of personal data, so they wanted to be sure they are adopting best practice in all areas of online protection. The outcome of the meeting was a general agreement that they should be aiming for Cyber Essentials accreditation and that Security Awareness Training for the whole team was an appropriate starting point in preparing for such an application.
Cyber PATH student Ehsan Mehrdad delivered the Security Awareness Training under the guidance of former Detective Superintendent Paul Lopez, Managing Director of the Eastern Cyber Resilience Centre. Commenting on the course, Ian said:
"It was amazing to see the engagement of the whole team. In all honesty, the entire team were expecting it to be a fairly tedious course, but everyone thoroughly enjoyed it and were blown away by some of the information that was shared.
"The sophistication of cyber attacks and the information about social engineering was especially relevant and eye-opening. And Ehsan's delivery was excellent and entertaining, with plenty of time set aside to answer questions and engage with the team. The room was actually buzzing, which was great to see!"
The team at The Westwood Organisation are certainly more aware of both the current status and the emerging threats. And even though they had generally adopted best practices, the partnership with South East CRC has highlighted small things that, with minor adjustments, will make them even more secure. In moving to the next stage of the journey, TWO have commissioned local form Everwell Associates to help prepare for Cyber Essentials certification. Paul from Everwell has completed a first audit, and we are now working through some action points ready for the application.
Commenting on the process so far, Ian said: "We're happy that there were no significant issues, and we've implemented some minor changes in processes and procedures that will assist us as we make our Cyber Essentials application, but more than that, the association with the South East CRC and Everwell has provided the confidence that we are doing the right things to make ourselves more resilient in the future.
The South East CRC service is Home Office funded and led by the police so is genuinely independent and trusted advice, and, importantly for a small business, excellent value for money”
More info:
http://www.secrc.police.uk/join
and for your immigration questions: ian@twolimited.co.uk
Date Published: 16/04/2025