Tech boss pledges £1m to keep businesses safe online

The CEO of cloud and hosting firm UKFast has pledged £1m to keeping businesses safe online, as the threat from hackers and data thieves continues to grow.
With high profile attacks and data leaks becoming increasingly common, the £30m turnover business is launching its latest endeavour to build a safer environment for online businesses.

Lawrence Jones, who heads up the Manchester-based technology company, said: “The 12 months since the launch of the BASEfund (Building A Safer Environment online fund) in 2013 have highlighted the need to invest further.

“There are hundreds of thousands of websites that continue to host without even a basic firewall. Often household names and websites you may use on a regular basis simply fail to invest in the security element of their hosting, leaving your data at risk. It’s a little like driving without insurance. Only there is no legislation to insist on forcing businesses to protect their customers.

“BASEfund helps subsidise the growing costs of protecting your websites and encourages business leaders to start focussing on this very critical topic.”

UKFast’s BASEfund makes top quality security solutions available to businesses that can’t cope with rapidly rising prices from IT companies hoping to cash-in on the growing fear of online attack. The fund offers grants of up to £5,000 for businesses to add security features to their networks and help them to grow to the next level.
Alongside these grants, the BASEfund now offers free vulnerability scanning as well as subsidised penetration testing, which highlights where hackers or cybercriminals could gain access to data or cause harm to a business’s networks.

Jones added: “The Heartbleed and Cryptolocker bugs pushed cybersecurity to the forefront of everyone’s minds and unfortunately led to some providers hoping to cash in on the fear. We’re doing the opposite; we’re offering subsidies to help businesses access the highest levels of security testing and protection.
“In doing so, hopefully we can help to build a safer environment for businesses online.”

The BASEfund is the latest step in UKFast’s drive to make the web a safer place; in 2012 the hosting firm launched its cybersecurity division Secarma, who last year revealed the vast amount of data still stored on second-hand devices and warned of the speed in which hackers can crack passwords.