Crest secures FCDO funding to help overseas countries increase their cyber-readiness | Computer Weekly
Summary
The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) is funding efforts, led by IT security certification body Crest, to help overseas cyber security companies develop and mature their product ranges and services.The pilot version of Crests Cyber Accelerated Maturity Programme, known as Crest Camp, will run until March 2025, and was announced to concide with the UK governments three-day cyber security event at Wilton Park, West Sussex.The event is geared towards encouraging international collaboration and discussion on cyber security issues so that participants can work together on measures geared towards improving the cyber-readiness of their individual countries.Crest Camp will feed into this by offering support to cyber security service providers from Armenia, Bahrain, Georgia, Ghana, Lithuania, Kenya, Thailand, Oman and the Philippines.The reason these particular countries have been earmarked to benefit from the initiative is because, according to Crest, there is an identified need to improve the capability of their respective cyber security ecosystems.Crest Camp embodies Crests mission to actively support companies in their journey toward professionalisation by providing targeted mentoring, training and guidance through the stages of the Crest Accreditation Pathway towards full membership and accreditation, said Crest, in a statement.Through strategic partnerships, Crest is setting new standards for growth and sustainability within the cyber security ecosystems of participating regions.The training element of the initiative comes at a time when there is a growing focus on what needs to be done, across the globe, to tackle the IT security skills gap to ensure organisations have the expertise needed to protect themselves from the risk posed by increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. The FCDOs funding for the project has been released to Crest in the form of a grant, and according to the government agency is a show of its commitment to encouraging greater collaboration between overseas entities when fighting cyber crime. According to Crest, the initiatives focus on helping private sector cyber security organisations represents a significant departure, given the majority of funding and grants in this space have traditionally been awarded to government agencies and their staff. Thank you to the FCDO for supporting Crest Camp, and recognising the importance of the private sector in developing a countrys cyber resilience and better securing Critical National Infrastructure, he said. In todays increasingly interconnected global market, we must look beyond our own national borders to do the hard work that makes us all safer from cyber threats.