This week Shaping Portsmouth launched the very first Portsmouth Cyber Crime Conference, working in partnership with the Hampshire Constabulary.

It is with great pleasure that we announce our Managing Director, Michael J Thornton, has been appointed as Chair to Shaping Portsmouth’s Cyber Crime Steering Group.

The intention is to provide businesses and organisations within the City and surrounding areas with the knowledge, documentation and proposed solutions on how to protect themselves against the ever growing threat of cyber-crime and to protect themselves against damaging and harmful invasion of their systems and processes

Delegates from 40 City organisations attended the launch meeting, and reviewed the current threat to businesses in Portsmouth as well as what we could do to help educate, prevent, communicate and improve the safety of our businesses vital assets.

Stef Nienalowski, Director of Shaping Portsmouth comments:

“It was a brilliant event and I am delighted that Michael J Thornton the owner of KSM Communications Limited has agreed to lead a team of 14 volunteers from all the key sectors of the city in a new Shaping Portsmouth Cyber Crime Programme.

Michael will kick this programme off over the next few weeks and with the members of the programme team agree the key objectives and time lines for this new Shaping programme.

I am delighted to have Michael on board and I am looking forward to how this initiative can help our small and medium sized businesses protect themselves from this ever increasing threat.”

Michael J Thornton, MD of KSM Telecom adds:

“I would like to add to the exciting news announced by Stef with my own vision for the future of the Cyber Crime Shaping steering group. The steering group has members from fourteen local businesses who have come together to provide a very valuable resource to the City to help business (small, medium and large) to combat this ever growing threat.

The members of the group will become apparent but needless to say they range from small to multi million pound organisations and the expertise within them is breath taking. It is my honour to be the chair of the Shaping Cyber Crime group and I look forward to working with you.”

This is great news for Portsmouth businesses and Michael is looking forward to leading the group.