Greater Manchester Cyber Foundry

A programe designed to help SMEs with business growth, stability and security. The Greater Manchester Cyber Foundry is a collaboration between the universities of Salford, Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan and Lancaster.

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How can we help?

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This fantastic fully-funded programme provides businesses with the opportunity to:

  • Investigate the potential for cyber innovation to support business growth and productivity through defence, market differentiation and diversification
  • Develop growth strategies utilising cyber innovation
  • Receive technical assistance (if eligible) from experts in cyber innovation

Growth, stability & security

Supporting SMEs

Increasingly, we are shifting into a digital world and having to face the problems that come with this. Specifically, businesses are facing new challenges in an ever-evolving market without the knowledge and infrastructure to sustain stability and growth. From taking care of clients and their data in the face of cyber attacks and adhering to new regulations to keeping designs and assets safe from the risk of security breaches.

This programme works with a broad range of businesses regardless of sector supporting the implementation of new products and services and helping to improve current systems and processes.

By working together, we’ll support SMEs with the best academic knowledge and insight to make a real difference to Greater Manchester, the North West and the UK as a whole. We’ll use our universities’ cyber security research to innovate and design new products and services. The programme is fully funded for eligible SMEs in Greater Manchester.

Whatever your business, Greater Manchester Cyber Foundry can help to improve your cyber operation.

Programme structure

The programme is a blend between online 1-2-1 sessions, workshops and learning modules. There is no cost to participating companies.

Phase One (Workshops, online materials and one-to-one meetings)

The business would need to commit to:

  • An initial diagnostic meeting
  • Attending online workshops
  • Completing several online, structured packages of support (business model canvas; innovation audit; absorptive capacity analysis; driving forces exercise; cyber growth; developing a business strategy)
  • Attend a one-to-one development meeting

Each business then receives a tailored report, business strategy and action plan.

Phase Two (Technical Assistance)

Some businesses may then be eligible to receive further technical assistance from one of the academic teams to drive forward a new cyber product or service. This phase would match the business’ support requirements with an expert in that field and work collaboratively on the project for around four months.  Examples of some of the areas of specialism include:

Data visualisation

Data science – privacy and anonymisation

Applied cryptography

Data driven democracy and fake news

Cloud computing security

Distributed ledger technology

Human aspect of security (socio-technical)

Distributed systems security

Biometric authentication

Fraud detection

Machine learning

Electrical power

Code verification

IoT security

Crypto markets

Penetration testing

Case Studies

Take a look at how other's have engaged with the Cyber Foundry programme.

Blogs

Below are a number of articles from our academics discussing the issue surrounding cyber security.

Technical articles

The Greater Manchester Cyber Foundry includes expertise and knowledge from Academics, Professors and Lecturers from four universities. The technical team are heavily involved in the delivery of our programme and you will find some of their writings, findings, articles and insights here.

 

Advanced Persistent Threats – What are they and do they really exist? by Robert Marsh

Advanced Persistent Threats are being utilised by organised criminals and are often developed/sponsored by nation states for a variety of different reasons.

Access article.

Logging: What is it and why is it important? by Robert Marsh

Log files are highly valuable data sets which are frequently used by software developers and engineers to understand what has gone wrong. Is that the limit to their value?

Access article.

Formjacking: What is it and how does it work? by Robert Marsh

Formjacking is a relatively new technique which cybercriminals are using to exploit and steal potentially sensitive information from commercial websites.

Access article.

Counterfeit Products. Protecting your business from imitation hardware by Robert Marsh

As the costs of research and development rise, innovative hardware devices that reflect these increased expenses are being targeted by counterfeit criminals.

Access article.

Our partners

The University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University and University of Salford, along with their regional neighbour Lancaster University work together on cyber security to maximise their contributions to regional and national agendas. 

 

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Get in touch

To find out more information on how to access the programme please contact:

erdfcyberfoundry-projectteam@salford.ac.uk