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Cyber Security Risk Management
Mitigate risk and ensure compliance against relevant standards and guidelines by establishing a comprehensive risk management program.
Our service provides the people, expertise, and resources necessary to implement a risk management strategy that mitigates risk without disrupting your operations.
The Importance of Risk Management
Most organisations realise the importance of cyber security risk management but often discover the task is more complex and time-consuming than first anticipated.
Interconnected Systems Larger organisations with extensive, interconnected systems find it harder to identify risks and how to mitigate them without impacting business operations.
Understanding Risk Ensuring a fully integrated risk management function requires a clear understanding of interactions and dependencies across the business and their potential impacts.
Resourcing Challenges In-house teams are often tasked with too many priorities to fully dedicate themselves to risk management, leaving little resource for this essential activity.
What to Expect from a Risk Management Service by Bridewell
Our consultants work closely with our clients to ensure their risk management strategy reflects their risk appetite, integrates with existing processes, and supports their wider business goals
Certified Risk Specialists
Our consultants have Certified Cyber Professional (CCP) certifications and NCSC Risk specialisms.
A Partner with Leading Industry Bodies
Our consultants work closely with the NCSC and other industry bodies to help shape national programmes and the future of the cyber security industry.
Experience Delivering Services at Scale
We have experience delivering risk management for some of the world’s largest CNI organisations across critical sectors.
Proven Methodologies and Expertise
Our consultants are established leaders in cyber security risk, audit, and supplier assurance, with certifications and experience in advising on NIST, CMMC, ISO 27001, NCSC CAF, OWASP and PCI DSS.
A Tailored Approach
We take a tailored approach to risk management that reflects the unique risks inherent to your organisation’s processes, sector, and risk appetite.
Why is it worth taking on a
Cyber Security Risk Management Service?
Simplified and Cost-Effective Risk Reduction
Risk Mitigation Having a comprehensive view of risk across the organisation enables you to easily apply pragmatic and cost-effective risk reduction strategies.
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Certification and Accreditation Requirements
Effective risk management to meet the quality and standards that auditors and accreditors require.
Easily Adopt New Standards and Legislation
Seamlessly align your cyber security programme with new standards, legislation, and business strategies.
Adapt to Changing Risk Levels
Manage the consequences of changing risk levels and develop appropriate continuity plans.
Start your Risk Management Process
Speak with one of our risk management experts to see how we can support your organisation in reducing risk and meeting regulatory demands.
How our Risk Management service works
Our risk management service encompasses all types of risk from security standards and policy, security controls information, security management system, to physical security.
- Step one: Our consultants perform an initial high-level assessment to identify potential risks within your organisation and where they fall short of industry frameworks or proprietary policies and standards.
- Step two: Depending on findings from the initial assessment, our consultants may advise whether any of your organisation’s third-party providers need a more in-depth, on-site visit and review.
- Step three: Having conducted a complete assessment, we then outline and implement an risk management process that addresses any identified risks or vulnerabilities to ensure they are mitigated and compliant.
- Step four: If required, our consultants can be utilised on an ongoing basis to augment your team and ensure this risk management process is adhered to on a continuous basis.
HESA Drive Digital Transformation with Bridewell’s DPO as a Service
The Challenge
As a leading HE data source and one of the largest processors of data in the UK, HESA handles ‘special category’ (highly sensitive) data for over 30 million people across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. To ensure that this data was handled securely and in compliance with all relevant regulations, HESA needed a highly qualified and driven DPO with the skills to both manage their data privacy function and support a major transformation project. For HESA, data is a core part of every aspect of their business and ensuring the right practices are in place is essential to their operations.
The challenge for HESA was finding a suitably qualified DPO to occupy the role at an appropriate cost and within a reasonable timeframe. As with many cyber security roles, data privacy experts are in high demand and there were few candidates with the right expertise and experience to match HESA’s requirements.
"We didn’t just want our DPO to come into HESA to run the data privacy team and maintain business as usual. We needed someone who could add strategic value to our processes and the major projects that are key to our current operations and future ambitions."
Given the size and scope of their organisation, data protection teams and architecture, HESA recognised the importance of finding the right person for the role and concluded that using a service provider to find a suitable DPO was a good option. Rather than undergoing a timely and expensive recruitment process, outsourcing to Bridewell assured them of a highly certified data privacy expert to lead their data protection team.
The Solution
In parallel to seeking a DPO, HESA were already engaged with Bridewell in an implementation project. Given the success of the infosec project and their strong relationship with the Bridewell consultant running it, HESA decided to bring them into the business as their named DPO.
"Bridewell was our first choice for a DPO. I had only been working with [our Bridewell consultant] for a few weeks but, given the quality of their work, it was clear that the standard they provided matched if not exceeded our requirements."
One of the first projects to support was a heavily technology-based business transformation, ‘Data Futures’, which was designed to wholly upgrade HESA’s existing infrastructure. The goal was to build a new technology platform within AWS that was fit for the digital age and would drive efficiencies in the higher education sector. Embedding data protection controls whilst maintaining a streamlined and agile programme of work was essential, given the scale and value of the project.
HESA’s named DPO supported across the entire programme, implementing a governance structure, offering complex technical advice in real-time throughout development, and ensuring that data protection was embedded by design. This was further supported by penetration tests from Bridewell’s offensive security team to ensure the integrity of the new platform.
Further to the Data Futures project, HESA also required their named DPO to support in a merger transaction with Jisc. In this capacity, they performed all required data protection workstreams in connection with the merger. Thinking ahead, a roadmap was created by our DPO support to determine how the two separate data protection teams from each of the merger partners could be most effectively integrated after completion.
"Chris, our named DPO, has been a trusted senior partner throughout the merger."
The Results
With Bridewell’s DPO as a Service, HESA were able to rapidly bring significant data privacy expertise and experience into their organisation. With a Bridewell consultant as their named DPO, they have a highly qualified, reliable data privacy expert who singlehandedly advises the business and works with them to solve their challenges. Regularly communicating with and providing recommendations to key internal and external stakeholders, they have performed a fundamental role in major projects essential to HESA’s operations.
Leading their data privacy team, their named DPO has written the entire data privacy compliance program and provided substantial support in improving multiple data workstreams.
"With Bridewell as our named DPO, we’ve been able to hand over full responsibility to our consultant. It’s an end-to-end service and we trust in their expertise and understanding of our business to advise our board, solve our data privacy challenges, and support our business objectives."
They have helped manage resource levels of the existing data privacy team and brought on additional Bridewell consultants when needed for further support. This is not just true of their typical business as usual operations but of their role in Data Futures and the merger, where they have acted as a trusted, senior adviser.
"A lot of our external stakeholders have come to rely on Chris [our named DPO]. He has formed a significant part of day-to-day operations and is an ambassador of the company. His high performance has helped us establish a best-in-class team and has raised the status of HESA within our sector."
Industry
Risk Management FAQs
The length of the engagement varies depending on the scope, current maturity and requirements. Some clients require days of advice and guidance, others prefer to utilise Bridewell for more in depth analysis, or to reduce the demand on their own resources on a temporary or long term basis.
Risk management is an ongoing process and Bridewell share knowledge, best practices and examples with clients to support organisations to mature and continue risk management practices independently.
Ideally an organisation will have an asset inventory, existing risk assessment and risk management processes and a previous risk assessment. We appreciate that organisations operate at different levels of maturity and that not all items might be available or complete.
Allocation of resources internally to support the engagement and risk management process is beneficial, often with communication to the business on the importance of risk management and what is required from staff and teams to support the initiative, along with the organisations reasons for focusing on risk management (e.g to support an ISO 27001 implementation or new business opportunity).
Some of the top cyber security risks include phishing attacks, ransomware, insider threats, advanced persistent threats (APTs) and unpatched software vulnerabilities.
Cyber security focuses on protecting systems, networks and data from cyber threats through measures like firewalls and encryption. Cyber risk management is a strategy within cyber security that involves identifying, assessing and prioritising risks to mitigate potential impacts.
A cyber security risk management plan is a structured approach to identifying, assessing and prioritising cyber security risks. It outlines strategies for mitigating or treating risks that include policies, procedures and controls. The plan also includes monitoring and reviewing approaches to new threats to maintain the ongoing protection of vital information.
To identify a cyber security risk, it’s important to conduct a structured risk assessment that will help identify, analyse and evaluate any potential threats to information centres. Some methods include cataloguing all data and hardware assets, identifying potential vulnerabilities, and determining threat likelihood.
Risk levels in cyber security range from low risk, which may have a minor impact on your organisation, through medium and high impact levels, to critical levels, which represent immediate and catastrophic damage to your organisation. Risk factors are determined by assessing the severity of impact, how easily they’re exploited, how widespread they are, and how easily they can be identified.
Why Us?
Awards
Our team have won numerous industry awards, including 'Cyber Security Company of the Year' at the Cyber Security Awards 2026 and Best Cyber Security Service Provider' at the Cyber Security Awards 2025.
Certifications
Our people and services are highly accredited by leading industry bodies including CREST, the NCSC, and more. Our SOC holds extensive accreditations from CREST (including for CSIR and SOC2) and works closely with our cyber consultancy services.
Partnerships
As a Microsoft Partner, we also hold advanced specialisms in Cloud Security and Threat Protection. We’ve also implemented some of the UK’s largest deployments of the Microsoft Security stack, inc. Sentinel, Defender, Purview and more.
