28 June 2022 – London, UK - Crossword Cybersecurity Plc (AIM:CCS, "Crossword", the "Company" or the "Group"), the cybersecurity solutions company focused on cyber strategy and risk, has today announced the creation of a new integrated Supply Chain Cyber practice.

In response to client demand and the substantial increase in supply chain cyber threat levels, the integrated practice provides a set of controls, processes and tools, along with a range of managed services, advice and training to massively reduce the risk of direct cyber-attacks as well as threats via third parties across a company's supply chain.

The practice provides an end-to-end approach to supply chain cybersecurity and includes a standard operating model (SOM) and a substantially updated version of Rizikon Assurance, Crossword's SaaS platform used by supplier management and cybersecurity teams and across an organisation to underpin the controls, tools and data needed to reduce supply chain risk.

Updated Rizikon features include automated assurance, flexible reporting and new dashboards that improve supply chain cyber assurance, risk and compliance strategy, policy and operations.

Experienced cybersecurity consultant, Ryan King, has been appointed as Practice Lead and is supported by a dedicated team of experts specialising in supply chain cyber risk.

Today's cyber threat potential is huge and growing fast. The European Under Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) reported in 2021 that it expected supply chain attacks to quadruple over the following 12 months. As a result, industries including but not limited to banking, retail and manufacturing are under mounting financial, reputational and regulatory pressure to take control of cybersecurity risks.

For organisations of any size, the greatest threats to cybersecurity are suppliers, third parties and connected technologies because they are so hard to control. Recent research independently conducted for Crossword of over 200 Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) found that 83 per cent of CISOs viewed "ensuring that the entire supply chain is water-tight in its ability to defend and recover against threat actors" as a challenge.

Today's solutions are failing – Crossword's end-to-end approach addresses the fundamentals

Many organisations are still using internally focused ideas and solutions to try and address cybersecurity risks in the supply chain, but by definition these are not sufficient since they fail to holistically integrate the cyber risks originating from external third parties. Furthermore, the longer and more diverse a supply chain becomes, the faster the risks multiply in tandem with an organisation's inability to monitor and manage those risks.

Crossword's Supply Chain Cyber approach is dedicated to meeting any organisation's cybersecurity and supply chain resilience obligations by providing an end-to-end solution. Crossword's Supply Chain Cyber offering provides:

• A team of cybersecurity industry experts, dedicated to defining and delivering risk management best practice
• A comprehensive and flexible supply chain cybersecurity Standard Operating Model that defines processes, techniques and structures needed to manage supply chain assurance, compliance, and risk in any industry
• An updated version of Rizikon Assurance - an automated, SaaS-based platform for managing supply chain cyber assurance, compliance and risk strategy, policy, and operations
• Cost-effective supplier cyber audits and security testing
• Consulting services including supply chain cyber benchmarking, maturity assessments and advisory consulting, and training
• Complete managed services for supply chain cyber assurance, compliance, and risk management.

Stuart Jubb, Group Managing Director at Crossword Cybersecurity Plc, commented: "A whole new operating model and mindset is required to properly address supply chain cyber risks and attacks. Looking only inwards and relying on internally focussed controls, systems and thinking is not enough to protect organisations today. Crossword's Supply Chain Cyber practice addresses the severity and fast-growing nature of risks present in supply chains. It gives our customers the tools and processes to securely and cost effectively manage these risks, benefiting not only the customer, but all members of their supply chain. The objective is to minimise collective risk and ensure cost-effective governance and adherence to regulations across all industries."

Rizikon – elevate your supplier risk management

The supply chain cyber standard operating model (SCC SOM) is supported by Rizikon Assurance, a SaaS platform used by supplier management and cybersecurity teams and across an organisation to underpin the controls, tools and data needed to reduce supply chain cyber risk.

Rizikon automates processes such as designing supply chain cyber policy, grouping suppliers, creating detailed assurance plans, applying appropriate assurance methods to each group, and reporting on risk, compliance, and assurance coverage across the whole supply chain. Rizikon also integrates with existing tools and data sources.

Learn more about Crossword's Supply Chain Cyber practice and standard operating model by visiting: https://www.crosswordcybersecurity.com/supply-chain-cyber

Contacts

Crossword Cybersecurity plc – Tel: +44 (0) 333 090 2587
Email: info@crosswordcybersecurity.com
Tom Ilube, Chief Executive Officer
Mary Dowd, Chief Financial Officer

Grant Thornton (Nominated Adviser) – Tel: +44 (0) 20 7383 5100
Colin Aaronson / Jamie Barklem / Daphne Zhang / Ciara Donnelly

Hybridan LLP (Broker) – Tel: +44 (0)203 764 2341
Claire Louise Noyce

For media enquiries contact:

General:
Duncan Gurney, GingerPR
duncan@gingerpr.co.uk – Tel: +44 (0)1932 485 300

Financial PR:
David Hothersall, Kinlan Communications
davidh@kinlan.net – Tel: +44 (0) 207 638 3435

About Crossword Cybersecurity plc

Crossword offers a range of cyber security solutions to help companies understand and reduce cyber security risk. We do this through a combination of people and technology, in the form of SaaS and software products, consulting, and managed services. Crossword's areas of emphasis are cyber security strategy and risk, supply chain cyber, threat detection and response, and digital identity and the aim is to build up a portfolio of cyber security products and services with recurring revenue models in these four areas. We work closely with UK universities and our products and services are often powered by academic research-driven insights. In the area of cybersecurity strategy and risk our consulting services include cyber maturity assessments, industry certifications, and virtual chief information security officer (vCISO) managed services.

Crossword's end-to-end supply chain cyber standard operating model (SCC SOM) is supported by our best-selling SaaS platform, Rizikon Assurance, along with cost-effective cyber audits, security testing services and complete managed services for supply chain cyber risk management. Threat detection and response services include our Nightingale AI-based network monitoring, Nixer to protect against application layer DDoS attacks, our Trillion and Arc breached credentials tracking platforms, and incident response. Crossword's work in digital identity is based on the World Wide Web Consortium W3C verifiable credentials standard and our current solution, Identiproof, enables secure digital verification of individuals to prevent fraud.

Crossword serves medium and large clients including FTSE 100, FTSE 250 and S&P listed companies in various sectors, such as defence, insurance, investment and retail banks, private equity, education, technology and manufacturing and has offices in the UK, Poland and Oman. Crossword is traded on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange.

Visit Crossword at https://www.crosswordcybersecurity.com/