Last month, we were able to expand our portfolio with a particular focus on small and medium-sized enterprises.

Project “Transferstelle Cybersicherheit”

The federal project “Transferstelle Cybersicherheit” offers its services free of charge. The focus is on small and medium-sized enterprises, start-ups and craft businesses. The transfer office is funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection.

In addition to various materials, a range of events are offered on the website. These events often deal with the targeted development of expertise and knowledge. However, you can also find dates for specialist conferences. Various topics from the field of “cyber security” are represented. These include classics such as “ISMS”, “data protection” and “backup”, as well as current topics such as “artificial intelligence” and its secure use or “NIS2”. Participation is possible online in many cases.

Last month, we pursued two projects together with Transferstelle Cybersicherheit:

• Providing our expertise as part of the emergency assistance offer
• Qualification as an IT security trainer

Emergency assistance

A special part of the “Transferstelle Cybersicherheit’s” offer is “emergency assistance”. Here, affected companies can receive initial general recommendations for action on possible IT security incidents as well as support from experts. It is therefore a reactive offer for the worst case scenario: “A day late and a dollar short.” This service also offers an initial assessment of your own situation.

In our view, this is a very simple way to get help if your own company has been caught unprepared and is often in “headless chicken” mode in practice. At this point, prepared companies find it easier to implement the so-called “incident response” on their own and to cope with potentially catastrophic operational disruptions on their own using prepared emergency plans.

Qualification IT security trainer

We were also able to gain further qualifications with the help of the “mIT Sicherheit Ausbilden” sub-project of the Transferstelle Cybersicherheit. The aim of this qualification is to support those responsible for training with tailored information, suggested methods and learning materials on the topic of IT security. The secure use of information technology must become part of the skills of employees as early as possible. It therefore makes sense to provide the “employees of the future” with appropriate modules as part of their early training.

In this context, we can also support companies in sensitizing their trainees and employees to information security. Our offer is flexible. On request, we can either act as a multiplier or directly offer topic-related training, awareness campaigns or trainee modules.

Our assessment

The cooperation with the Transferstelle Cybersicherheit has left us with a consistently positive impression. Dialogs with contact persons have been very pleasant and both the events offered and the coordination regarding our possible contributions to support small and medium enterprises have been constructive in every case.

We already had points of contact with the “mIT Standard sicher” project in 2024. A consulting standard was developed in this project, which can now be found as a “CyberRisikoCheck” (cyber risk check) in accordance with DIN SPEC 27076 on the BSI (German Federal Office for Information Security) website, among others. Up-to-date information on this can be found either on the BSI website or on the website of project Transferstelle Cybersicherheit. At the same time, interested companies can also find a guided self-assessment on the website of the Transferstelle Cybersicherheit. This self-assessment is somewhat lower-threshold than the “CyberRiskoCheck” in accordance with DIN SPEC 27076 or the “Cyber-Sicherheits-Check” from the “Allianz für Cybersicherheit”.

All in all, there are many offers for companies of all sizes to do something about their own information security. In our view, the most important thing is to set out and protect yourself. The more information technology is used and the more digital your own processes become, the more important it is to build up skills and expertise in these areas. If you don’t have the time to build up resources internally, we will be happy to support you.