From Vision To Reality: The Cyberfort Group Story

The Cyberfort Group is a world-class cybersecurity organisation that offers a matrix of global cybersecurity services and products designed to help businesses grow and succeed. Our services are easy to understand and translate: We Advise (Cyber Consulting services), Detect (Penetration Testing services) and Defend (Hosting and SOC services).

Put simply, cybersecurity is all we do. We offer world-class scope, breadth and depth of cybersecurity capabilities, accreditations and expertise, topped off with two highly secure UK-based data centres.

Cyberfort’s mission is simple: To help our clients and partners to grow and succeed by treating their cybersecurity – and the privacy of their data – as if it were our own and delivering the highest quality of service.

With a Net Promoter Score of nearly 80 percent, we are proud of our strong and long-standing relationships with the organisations we work with. We help businesses negotiate the cybersecurity world with solutions that evolve as they grow and as the external landscape shifts and evolves.

Bringing a vision to life

The idea of creating such a comprehensive cybersecurity organisation was sparked in 2017 when Andy Hague, now Cyberfort’s CEO, identified the need for a single joined-up entity that could meet every cybersecurity requirement.

Andy’s career in cybersecurity had already spanned two decades. He was a senior executive with expertise in finance, technology, GDPR, cybersecurity and secure hosting, and had built up an impressive track record in turnaround, M&A integration and rapid-growth projects across a variety of industries and business sizes.

Andy had the experience and insight to survey the cybersecurity landscape and see the disparity between the increasing threat of vulnerability and breach, and the solutions the market was providing. He saw that many cybersecurity organisations were niche players offering specific services and set about creating an organisation that could offer the full spectrum of services and products backed up with expertise, accreditation’s and solid business and technical knowledge.

With his vision crystallised, Andy set out to assemble a best-of-breed powerhouse through a ‘buy or build’ strategy built on three pillars of service: ADVISE, DETECT and DEFEND.

Bunkering up for security success

The Cyberfort Group reached its first significant milestone in July 2017 when Andy acquired the freehold to two unique ex-MOD nuclear bunkers. The sites, located in Newbury, Berkshire, and Ash, Kent, benefit from being well away from the high security risk zone of London.

Both sites are fortresses of reinforced three-metre-thick concrete designed to withstand a nuclear attack and have benefitted from millions of pounds of investment to transform them into state-of-the-art secure facilities. This provides the infrastructure, connectivity and resilience to meet today’s most demanding cybersecurity and connectivity requirements.

The facilities now form Cyberfort’s DEFEND pillar, offering Managed Cloud and Hosting, Colocation, Technical Solution Architecture and SOC services.

Building our own pen testing expertise

With his first acquisition successfully completed, Andy began his search for a world-class penetration testing business that would form Cyberfort’s DETECT pillar. He had already been heavily involved in the niche industry for many years and had a detailed knowledge of the qualities of a successful ‘pen testing’ business. With very few independent businesses operating in the space, he knew it would be a challenge to find a ready-made business to buy.

Indeed, having assessed the capabilities and skill of many organisations, Andy concluded that none met his exact requirements and he’d have to build his own. He invested a great deal of time and energy into recruiting a crack team of penetration testers, and the pen testing arm of Cyberfort was launched in February 2018. It gained CREST and Check accreditation within 18 months of launching and quickly gained a reputation for being the best around.

Cyber advisory services complete the picture

With the DEFEND and DETECT pillars firmly established, Andy set about searching the market for a best-of-breed cybersecurity consultancy to form Cyberfort’s ADVISE pillar. In June 2018, Cyberfort Group acquired Leeds-based consultancy Agenci, attracted by its strong compliance approach to data security, specifically ISO 27001 and GDPR.

Agenci was the right fit for Cyberfort because it specialised in identifying and managing information risk, data protection and information security management. This meant Cyberfort could not only rigorously ensure its clients achieve compliance, but also use compliance as a business enabler to meet their business goals.

Cyberfort made its final acquisition in April 2019, with London and Newcastle-based cybersecurity, assurance and monitoring experts Auriga Consulting. Auriga provided bespoke solutions in risk and compliance management, cyber design and implementation, and cyber monitoring and intelligence. Auriga also had a strong track record of supporting large HMG departments, non-departmental public bodies and projects of critical national infrastructure, as well as wide-ranging private sector work for blue-chip and FTSE companies, SMEs and tech start-ups.

With all the pieces of Andy’s vision now assembled, Cyberfort’s ADVISE, DETECT and DEFEND pillars are standing strong, providing complete data assurance to the widest range of public and private sector organisations.

Andy is quite rightly proud of the Cyberfort Group he was instrumental in building, stating: “Having a business that can ADVISE you on the potential risks your business faces, help DETECT if these risks exist within your organisation, and DEFEND you against those risks should they materialise is an incredibly important thing in modern society. We are a team of cybersecurity professionals who are big enough to help, but small enough to care. It’s who we are and what we do.”

To find out more about Cyberfort’s products and services, or if you just want a friendly chat about your cybersecurity, please get in touch.