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The Scottish Government has announced a contract worth £500,000 to extend cyber resilience training to a further 250 organisations across the country.  

The grant will allow the Scottish Business Resilience Centre (SBRC) to hold online and in-person workshops for public services and third sector health, housing and social care bodies intended to help them better prepare and protect themselves.  

Some 450 organisations have already undergone the training, which was launched in 2020. It involves mock scenarios such as third-party software compromise, ransomware attacks, and a threatened sensitive data leak.

The Scottish Government hope that more than 250 further organisations will benefit from the next phase of the programme, ahead of the major summit in Edinburgh as part of European Cyber Month in October.  

Justice Secretary Keith Brown, who will address the event, said: “We have all seen the devastating impact of an organisation falling victim to a cyber-related incident, so extending training to make more people aware of the risks is absolutely crucial.

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“The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring Scotland leads the way in cyber resilience and security. This extended training will help many more organisations to stave off the threat of an attack and protect against disruptive and costly data breaches. The workshops provide practical guidance to mitigate or respond to hostile cyber-attacks. I would urge eligible organisations to take up this opportunity to ensure they are protected.”

SBRC, which will deliver the training, works with companies across the country to help them meet external threats – including cybersecurity risks, but also other forms of economic crime and dangers to business resilience. Its work is supported by the Scottish Government, police, and fire and rescue services, as well as national representative bodies of industries including drinks, financial services, and the wider business sector.

Speaking to PublicTechnology last year, chief executive Jude McCorry said that the organisation has “seen a huge increase in our cyber work” since the start of the pandemic.

In a statement announcing the expansion of the resilience training, she said: “There is no denying that the ongoing pressure facing everyone from a cyber perspective has increased massively in recent years. Just as we see one organisation recover from the grips of a cyber-incident, another is targeted. It is also now believed that cyber criminals have targeted more than three-quarters of public sector organisations and, closer to home, we have seen this play out with a number of disruptive large-scale attacks already in Scotland. We don’t want to see more Scottish organisations fall victim to these attacks and that is why upskilling and awareness programmes continue to be so vital.”