diego cervo – stock.adobe.com
The Cyber Helpline, a national charity dedicated to providing support and advice to victims of cyber crime and online stalking, is to receive a major boost to its finances from the National Lottery Community Fund, which has awarded it £10,000 to support its work.
The helpline was founded a few years ago by security consultant and former Secureworks marketing head Rory Innes, who saw a gap in support for cyber crime victims that was leaving millions of people to fall through the gaps.
He set up the service with the intention of connecting victims to some of the estimated 58,000 private sector security professionals currently working in the UK. The helpline now offers free and confidential emergency assistance to cyber crime victims through its network of 50 volunteer cyber security experts and 24/7 guidance through an online chatbot.
But demand for its services has exploded in the past nine months, with huge spikes in online fraud and abuse seen during the Covid-19 pandemic, meaning the cost of running its services has also soared.
“We’re delighted that The National Lottery Community Fund has recognised our work in this way. Now, thanks to National Lottery players, we will be able to support hundreds more victims of cyber crime in the UK and alleviate the severe emotional and financial burden caused by these attacks,” said Innes.
“At a time when the country is going through a national lockdown and economic hardship amid redundancies and closed businesses, we see our mission of creating a country where the cyber criminals do not win as more important than ever.”
The Cyber Helpline will split the money between scaling its chatbot technology to offer assistance tailored to pandemic-linked crime and onboarding new volunteers to act as first responders. Currently, the team supports around 400 people every month, addressing problems such as stalking, lost devices, hacked accounts, online bullying and harassment, and sextortion and revenge porn. They aim to help victims take back control of their lives following a cyber attack and learn how to secure their online presence.
“Stalking is like online murder,” said Linda, a recent victim of online stalking who was helped by the service. “It’s a terrible experience and one I felt I would never escape. The Cyber Helpline team helped me navigate an online world I just didn’t understand. The way you worked in unison with the other parties involved and had a clear plan made me feel safe. I knew I was in good hands. Keep up the good work, this is a vital service for other stalking victims like me.”
Andrew Pitt, director of security channel managed service provider Saepio, who recently completed a virtual 5k fundraising run in support of The Cyber Helpline, added: “The team at Saepio is incredibly passionate about giving back and we are proud to support The Cyber Helpline.
“We are committed to raising awareness for this meaningful cause, which helps members of the public who fall victim to cyber crime – from ransomware attacks, to hacked email accounts and cyber bullying.”
In this e-guide, we will explore the links between ransomware attacks, data breaches and identity theft. First, Nicholas Fearn investigates the phenomenon of the double extortion attack, and shares some insider advice on how to stop them, while we’ll explore the top five ways data backups can protect against ransomware in the first place.
The antitrust lawsuits allege Facebook impeded competition by buying up rivals to control the market.
Although 5G is still years away from mainstream adoption, some enterprises have started rolling out use cases that can deliver …
CIO dashboards can be a vital tool for assessing metrics in real time to gain insight on IT performance and support better …
Despite implementation challenges, enterprise security leaders see zero trust as the security model of the future and are moving …
While no zero-day exploits were included in the red team tools, FireEye released detection rules and known vulnerabilities to …
Enterprises struggle to get the most out of their security operation centers. Using the proper SOC metrics and KPIs can help. …
The Aruba Fabric Composer is best suited for a CX switching fabric within a small and midsize data center. The company also …
Network performance is a top issue among IT teams and remote workers amid the pandemic and can correlate with other technical …
The Apstra acquisition could help Juniper sell networking hardware and software to heterogeneous data centers and large-scale …
It’s critical to business operations and your overall budget to know what a good colocation SLA covers, what it doesn’t and how …
Colocation companies offer a wide range of facilities and services that can help organizations reduce or eliminate the costs …
Colocation facility costs can include anything from power fees and bandwidth service charges to connectivity expenses, change …
The new Varada Data Platform combines data virtualization with the open source Presto SQL query engine to help enable rapid …
Raj Verma, CEO of SingleStore, explains why the vendor rebranded from MemSQL and how its platform is more than just an in-memory …
Collibra CEO discusses the importance of data governance for enterprises and how to tie data governance to business terminology …
All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2000 – 2020, TechTarget
Privacy Policy
Cookie Preferences
Do Not Sell My Personal Info
