Technology firm UKFast is committing a further £3m to its cybersecurity fund to protect businesses online, taking the total amount donated to £20m.
The BASEfund (Building a Safer Environment) initiative has given more than £17m to UK businesses in the decade since the scheme launched. Now, UKFast is pledging a further £3m, growing the fund’s scope and enabling hundreds of businesses to strengthen their security.
The relaunch of BASEfund also sees the inclusion of a number of new security products including Threat Monitoring, DDoS protection, web application firewalls and penetration testing.
Manchester-based UKFast collaborates closely with Secarma, the security business owned by UKFast founder and CEO Lawrence Jones MBE, to deliver cloud security solutions and penetration testing services.
“We spent the first decade and more of our journey explaining why people needed to get themselves online and get themselves higher up the search rankings,” said Jones.
“That has changed over the past decade, as businesses understand the value of being online. Now it’s our responsibility to help secure those organisations.
“All businesses need cybersecurity, but for some the cost is prohibitive and as a result there are more and more insecure websites and applications holding critical, sensitive information.
“BASEfund is designed to help businesses get the security they need, where it might otherwise be cost-prohibitive or overlooked for other priorities. We’ve set aside this pot of money to contribute towards people’s safety and security online because these threats have to be taken seriously. By the end of this year we’re set to have given away a total of £20m to protect our clients.
“The fund is specifically for security products and originally gave people access to firewalls and other hardware. With cyber-threats constantly changing and evolving, we’ve expanded BASEfund to include a raft of security products which our R&D team has developed in recent years.”
The news comes just a week after the announcement that Secarma has taken a 13.3 per cent stake in digital resilience group Shearwater Group PLC, in a deal worth £7.4m