The Global Technology Industry Association (GTIA) is teaming up with a police-led not-for-profit initiative in an effort to help UK SMEs become more secure.
The newly rebranded channel trade association in 2023 launched its Trustmark, a foundational security programme designed to “give MSPs their why”.
As part of the GTIA Cybersecurity Trustmark scheme, the group wants its UK MSP members to amplify the message of the nine regional Cyber Resilience Centres (CRCs) set up in 2021.
The CRCs form part of the National Cyber Resilience Centre Group, a strategic collaboration between the police, government, private sector and academia, of which the GTIA is an Ambassador partner.
Their aim is to provide affordable, high-quality cyber resilience services to smaller organisations in their locality.
“Our goal as Ambassadors is to help the UK government and policing to amplify the message they already have with the message we’re providing our members in the IT channel,” Wayne Selk, VP Cybersecurity Programs at GTIA, told IT Channel Oxygen.
Trustmark momentum
Selk said the GTIA eventually wants 80% of the world’s MSPs to have gone through its Trustmark, which distils numerous global frameworks into 177 safeguards.
In many cases, MSPs lack the same internal cybersecurity controls they expect their clients to have put in place, Selk noted.
That’s why the vendor-neutral trade association is putting an increased emphasis on risk management.
“The focus inside our cybersecurity programmes is to really help give that awareness and understanding of why cybersecurity is so important, and how you can integrate it into your MSP and then bring that conversation to your clients,” Selk explained.
“Excited”
Patrick Milford of The South East CRC said he is “excited” to begin working with the GTIA’s MSP members to promote its message to their “huge number of SME customers”.
“Secondly, as Wayne said, it’s a bit like, ‘do as I say, not as I do’, so we’re looking at how we can work with MSPs to drive standards across the whole network,” Milford told IT Channel Oxygen.
Via a ‘train the trainer’ initiative, GTIA will pass on its cyber expertise to police members of the CRCs, Milford confirmed.
“GTIA has been doing work in risk management for a lot longer than we have, so it’s about tapping into the resources Wayne and his team have,” Milford explained.
“Quite often, cyber is seen as a really difficult problem for organisations, because it’s complicated and over people’s heads.
“What we’re trying to say is, actually, if you address it just like any other risk, it becomes a lot less complicated. They just need to look at cyber as another risk they can overcome.”
Setting up for “best success”
Although new government legislation is designed to tighten cybersecurity standards among companies with 51 or more employees, the GTIA wants to ensure SMEs get the same message, Selk said.
“Let’s work with organisations like National Policing and the Cyber Resilience Centres to amplify the right message out,” he said.
News of the CRC partnership came as the GTIA teased key findings from its forthcoming Channel Trends in Cybersecurity 2025 research.
More than half of ITSPs questioned reported that cybersecurity plays a critical role in their business operations today.
Around 30% of ITSPs reported experiencing a cyberattack in the past two years, with data breaches and phishing attacks being the most common incidents, meanwhile.
GTIA’s Trustmark is “not the end” for MSPs when it comes to bolstering their cybersecurity credentials, Selk stressed.
“This is to get them started on that journey to understand what’s next, whether that’s ISO 27001, NIST 800-171 or 800-853,” he emphasised.
“They need to set their businesses up for best success, not minimum standard.”
This article was produced in association with the GTIA and is classified as partner content. What is partner content? See more here.
