Last week I went to a breakfast meeting. You might not think this is odd, but this was an event put on by Barclays, my business bankers, for local businesses. And it was titled "Fraud Prevention Event for Businesses".
I wasn't expecting to learn anything new from this. After all, security of networks and business processes is what we do. However, I was intrigued to see just how good the advice was going to be. How relevant, how up to date, and how appropriately pitched. So I trundled along to the golf club at Pidley, along with 60 or so other small business owners.
After the obligatory bacon buns and coffee, the presentations started. The morning's agenda immediately revealed that this wasn't a wobbly pitch from the local bank branch's IT guy, filled with umms and ahhs and dubious out-of-date advice. To kick off, we had the deputy police and crime commissioner for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough; he was followed by Joe Cooksey from Barclays, of which more in a moment. Then we heard from Cambridgeshire Constabulary's fraud and cybersecurity advisor, followed by a representative from CAPASP (Cambridge and Peterborough Against Scams Partnership), and closing remarks from a Peterborough City Council councillor. The whole event took about two hours.
The meat of the presentation was by Joe Cooksey, vertical head of digital for Specialist Client Solutions at Barclays. He took the room through a coherent, ground-up guide to small business security, via scams, passwords, security best practices and all the dos and don'ts that those of us in the know have all learnt the hard way. It was clear from the somewhat panicked looks on many attendees' faces that far too many are ..
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