Central Cab Care and Cyber Essentials – A Case Study

Established in 2003, Central Cab Care is now one of the leading taxi credit hire companies in the UK. Their professional, friendly, and multi-lingual team take a proactive approach and employ high standards of customer service, ensuring both customers and insurers are kept up to date throughout the claims process.

Hubtel IT have provided IT support and cyber security services to Central Cab Care for over 4 years and telecoms for over 15 years and have become a trusted advisor to the business in all things IT related.

Therefore, when Central Cab Care’s Operations Director, Marie Champion, identified a need for their Company to become accredited with a cyber-security standard, in response to the increasing compliance requirements of the insurance and financial industries, it was Hubtel IT she contacted.

The UK Government rolled out their Cyber Essentials scheme in 2014, aiming to arm UK businesses with support and materials to enact tighter controls on their IT infrastructure.

Since then, we have seen a dramatic increase in inter-connectivity between devices, plus the mainstream adoption of “remote working” – all of which increases the theoretical size of the entry point into your systems for those with malicious intent.

Receiving Cyber Essentials accreditation passes confidence to your current, and potential, customers and suppliers that your network infrastructure is secure, reducing the risk that their own platforms and data are infiltrated.

This was of particular importance to Central Cab Care as their business works closely with the finance industry – notoriously a target for ransomware and malware attacks.

We started Central Cab Care on their journey by registering them with Cyber Smart, a Cyber Essentials and GDPR compliance evaluation and monitoring platform, with whom Hubtel IT have built an excellent relationship over the past few years, via our partnership with Brigantia Partners. From there, we conducted a thorough audit of the current Central Cab Care IT infrastructure against the 5 key controls required to meet the Cyber Essentials standard and documented the findings.

These 5 key controls are:

• Firewalls and Internet gateways
• Secure configuration
• Access control
• Malware protection
• Patch management

This information was entered into the Cyber Smart portal along with supporting evidence and information used to define the scope of the certification.

The primary benefit of using the Cyber Smart solution for submission is that information can be vetted before being sent to the certification body, to make certain all inputs are correct, reducing the risk of a failed submission for inaccurate information.

Alongside an audit of their hardware and software, we reviewed Central Cab Care’s internal IT Policies to determine whether they were up-to-date and met compliancy requirements. For any policy which fell short of the mark, we liaised with CCC’s HR Manager, Rachel Green, and updated the policies together.

The submission process was completed within a few days and notification of success was received 24 hours later.

With Hubtel IT’s support and expertise, Central Cab Care were awarded their digital certificate of Cyber Essentials compliance. Receipt of this also brings with it digital media which can be used on their website, email signatures, and letterheads. Furthermore, they received a physical “paper” certificate, for display at their offices and mark their achievement.

If you would like more information on certifying your business to the Cyber Essentials standard, or if you’re looking for IT services Birmingham , give Hubtel IT a call on 01675 466637, email us at enquiries@hubtelit.co.uk.