Cyber and Fraud Centre, a social enterprise dedicated to improving national cyber resilience in Scotland, has ploughed more than £3m of financial support into cyber security projects across the country in the past year.
The organisation moved to a social enterprise model in January 2025, pledging to reinvest profits generated through its core b2b professional cyber services offering back into wider initiatives both to support community cyber resilience in Scotland, and protect organisations than are more vulnerable or less able to protect themselves.
Recipients of funding have included charities, community groups, social housing providers, microbusinesses, and individuals affected by cyber fraud.
“As Scotland’s only cyber security social enterprise, our purpose goes beyond service delivery. We reinvest our time, expertise and resources to support the communities we serve, helping ensure organisations are not priced out of protection and that cyber resilience is accessible to all,” said Cyber Fraud Centre CEO Jude McCorry.
“With organisations under increasing pressure to demonstrate strong cyber security standards to unlock business opportunities, cyber resilience is now an economic imperative as much as it is a security one.
“We are incredibly proud of the impact achieved in our first year as a social enterprise and grateful to everyone who has contributed. As the Centre continues to grow, so too does our ability to give back. Over the coming year, we’ll continue expanding our programmes, with a particular focus on evolving our incident response helpline [reachable on 0800 1670 623] to provide ongoing – rather than just incident-specific – advice.”
Community impact
The Centre has worked on several projects during the past 12 months, including delivering £1.4m worth of CPD-accredited security training and £45,000 worth of free cyber ‘MOTs’ to to charities, SMEs and social housing bodies; provided 50 free places on its executive education programme for third-sector leaders and board members; and supported over 700 individuals victimised by cyber fraudsters, with an estimated £1.6m in losses prevented or recovered.
It has also been working on the frontlines, providing over £500,000 worth of direct support to help organisations respond to and recover from business email compromise (BEC), phishing and ransomware attacks, while intelligence-led interventions have halted 10 distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, creating an estimated savings of around £100,000 for the targeted organisations.
Gerry Britton, CEO of Street Soccer, an Edinburgh-based charity that delivers education, mental health services, social support networks and other opportunities through football, said: “As a charitable organisation, we needed a partner that understood both our resource constraints and the importance of protecting sensitive data. The team at the Cyber and Fraud Centre Scotland provided us with a clear, prioritised view of our vulnerabilities, allowing us to focus on the areas that mattered most.
“Their proactive, tailored advice has helped us strengthen our cyber resilience step by step, and the depth of their testing and ongoing support has been a gamechanger.”
Elsewhere, the Centre has been investing in the future security workforce through an ongoing partnership with the nationally-renowned cyber hub at Abertay University in Dundee through which it has offered paid placements to aspiring ethical hackers, over 70 of whom have found direct employment since the university’s programme started in 2020. It also engaged with 20 schools and more than 200 girls and young women to encourage them to consider pursuing careers in the sector.
Celebrations
To celebrate its successes to date, Cyber and Fraud Centre Scotland is currently running a competition for registered charities in Scotland to win a 12-month cyber support package valued at £10,000.
