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The Lancashire Cyber Foundry

Building on the success of the Greater Manchester Cyber Foundry, the £2.1 million Lancashire Cyber Foundry programme offers the opportunity for SMEs to increase their awareness of cyber security technologies and explore the development of new digital products and services using technology to innovate.

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The Lancashire Cyber Foundry is part funded by the European Regional Development Fund

The logos of the lancashire Cyber Foundry, The European Regional Development Fund and the Northern Powerhouse

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What is the Lancashire Cyber Foundry?

Delivering a blend of face-to-face workshops, online modules, and software development putting cyber security at the forefront, the Lancashire Cyber Foundry will increase SME innovation increase business growth, stability and security through the increased awareness and application of cyber security technologies across 320 SMEs.

The Lancashire Cyber Foundry (LCF) has been created to share the expertise of Lancaster University with businesses to prepare them for their digital future.

At LCF we are passionate about seeing SMEs release new products, digitally innovate, grow in size and revenue, and collaborate with researchers at Lancaster University. Having been business owners and managers ourselves we understand the pressures on SMEs and the challenges of daily operations whilst innovating against a constantly changing landscape. We’ve developed a three-part programme to support SMEs in Lancashire to better position themselves to defend, innovate and grow.

LCF draws on best practice from our other cyber projects, such as the Greater Manchester Cyber Foundry, which supports SMEs in Greater Manchester, and shares the same principles of sharing expertise to help defend, innovate and grow businesses.

Defend

We’ll help to teach you how to defend your business from cyber-attacks and be compliant to regulations such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), making it safer for you, your supply chain, and your customers to do business together.

Innovate

We’ll review your current systems with you, make recommendations and give you the tools and specialist expertise you need to innovate within your sector.

We offer expert innovation advice and guidance, providing businesses with expert knowledge and highly specialised and technical skills to innovate and improve performance.

Grow

We’ll remove the concerns in digital areas that might compromise your growth, and raise your technical confidence in new areas of technology, so you can focus on developing and expanding your business.

We can help your business transform ideas into new digital products, processes and services, and create new solutions, new strategies, improving business performance and competitiveness.

Consider:

  • Does your business process any kind of online payment and record details?
  • Does your business hold client’s personal details/sensitive data?

Consider:

  • Are you considering digitizing your business and going online or creating an app/software?
  • Is your business looking for a gateway into a government supply chain or something similar?

Consider:

  • Are you already thinking about expanding and future growth?
  • Could you benefit from improving processes and strategies or differentiating yourselves in the market?

Who we are

LCF is run by the Science and Technology Partnerships and Business Engagement Team at Lancaster University. The Science and Technology Partnerships and Business Engagement Team’s mission is to develop and sustain internal and external partnerships with students, researchers, knowledge exchange professionals, industry and public/ private sector organisations. Our team not only delivers economic value to the university in terms of the income we generate, circa £75.5m in the last 5 years, but also has social, economic and environmental impacts across the region in terms of the student placements facilitated, the organisations we work with, the products we help develop, and the jobs we help create.

  • Infolab21

    The School of Computing and Communications, based in InfoLab21, is our world-class teaching and research hub for computer science and communications systems.

  • Security Lancaster

    Security Lancaster and the EPSRC awarded Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research, delivers research and education that innovates and creatively challenges the way that individuals, organisations and societies secure and protect themselves.

  • The Faculty of Science and Technology

    We pride ourselves on the depth, the range and the quality of our research. From breaking new ground in astrophysics to cyber security, our staff are active in their specialist areas.