Inaugural EMCRC Christmas networking event proves to be ‘big success’

On Wednesday, December 13, the East Midlands Cyber Resilience Centre held their inaugural Christmas networking event which brought together the EMCRC’s wider network of partners and stakeholders in one location to review the year and share their vision for the future.

The event was hosted by Nelsons solicitors – who are Community Ambassadors of the Centre, and whose Partner Kevin Modiri advises the Board.

In their spacious and modern Nottingham office, the event brought together the Centre’s Cyber Essentials Partners, ambassadors, advisors, their CyberPATH students and other EMCRC affiliates.

With a festive feel creating a friendly and vibrant atmosphere, many people were meeting each other face to face for the first time, whilst old friends and colleagues were reunited.

The Derbyshire Police and Crime Commissioner, Angelique Foster, attended the event to show her support; the Commissioner occupies a leadership role within the EMCRC sitting on the board and has been a great supporter of the EMCRC’s work.

Also present were key representatives from their university partners: University of Nottingham, De Montfort University and the University of Derby. Representation also came from the East Midlands Chamber and a great turnout from Natwest, who are National Ambassadors of the National CRC group.

EMCRC Chairman Chief Superintendent Dave Kirby delivered a welcome address to the network where he discussed the important work the Centre is undertaking before handing over to Managing Director, Colin Ellis.

Colin underlined the progress made by the Centre so far and shared his vision for the future, which includes a much closer and involved working practice with all those representatives from their business and university partners, as well as having a physical EMCRC office space in each of the 5 counties to help them gain a much wider audience and increase awareness.

Colin commented:

“To really help protect our businesses, schools and charities to stay secure online we at the EMCRC and policing need to work together with those sectors to understand the needs and the complexities of those organisations.

“Our CRC network is made up of a broad church for this reason, who have a wide breadth of experience, capability and reach. We are not just made up of cyber security professionals, we have industry professionals from diverse sectors with diverse skills, all of whom recognise the threat to business that cyber and online crime bring.

“Getting our partners all together in a room was really important to talk about the work we are doing to support SMEs and devise how we can better reach and help all organisations across the east midlands. Its also really important to acknowledge that a collaborative approach is needed to achieve this. All our partners and friends understand this and often give up their own time to help – so it was nice to be able to thank them too.”

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