Cyber Security Services for UK Small and Medium Businesses

Security work sized for a real small business

Most cyber security is sold to organisations with a security team, a budget line and a compliance department. Small businesses have none of those, which is why so much security advice goes unread. Cipher Knights exists for the other end of the market: the twelve-person accountancy practice, the family manufacturer, the dental group, the online retailer with one part-time IT contractor.

Every engagement starts with the same question — what would actually hurt this business? For an e-commerce firm it is card data and website downtime. For a healthcare practice it is patient records and an ICO notification. For a manufacturer it is a ransomware event stopping the line. We scope the work against that answer rather than against a generic checklist, so you spend money on the controls that change your risk.

• ✓Fixed-scope, fixed-price engagements — no open-ended day rates
• ✓Findings written for a business owner, with a technical annex for your IT provider
• ✓Every finding ranked by real-world exploitability, not just CVSS score
• ✓Remediation guidance you can hand straight to whoever manages your systems

Where most small businesses are actually exposed

Across the assessments we run, the same handful of issues account for the large majority of genuine risk. Almost none of them involve exotic attacks. They are unpatched internet-facing software, Microsoft 365 accounts without multi-factor authentication, flat internal networks where one infected laptop reaches every server, forgotten administrator accounts belonging to people who left, and backups that have never been restored from.

That is good news, because it means meaningful improvement is usually achievable in weeks rather than years. Our job is to tell you which five things to do first and to be specific about how to do them — not to hand you a 90-page report and an invoice.

• ✓Internet-facing systems missing security updates
• ✓Email and cloud accounts without multi-factor authentication
• ✓Over-privileged and orphaned user accounts
• ✓Flat networks with no separation between guest, staff and server traffic
• ✓Backups that are never tested, or are reachable from the same network
• ✓Staff who have never been shown what a modern phishing email looks like

How an engagement runs

We keep the process short and predictable. A free scoping call establishes what you run and what matters. We then send a written scope and fixed price before any work begins, so there are no surprises. Testing or review work happens on agreed dates, with a named consultant you can contact directly throughout.

You receive the report, we walk you through it on a call, and — where you want it — we help implement the fixes or work alongside your existing IT provider. Where a finding is critical we tell you the same day rather than waiting for the report.

• ✓1. Free consultation — 30 to 60 minutes, remote or on-site in Leicester
• ✓2. Written scope, timeline and fixed price for your approval
• ✓3. Assessment or implementation work on agreed dates
• ✓4. Report plus a walkthrough call in plain English
• ✓5. Remediation support, then a free retest of the issues we found

Working alongside your existing IT provider

A lot of our clients already have an IT support company they are happy with. We are not trying to replace them. Security assessment and day-to-day IT support are genuinely different disciplines, and there is a reason auditors prefer the two to be separate — the people who built a configuration are rarely the best people to find its flaws.

Where you want a single supplier we can take on the IT support too. Where you do not, we write our findings so that your provider can act on them without a translation layer, and we are happy to join a call with them.