The Scottish Business Resilience Centre (SBRC) has launched a new app to provide advice and support for businesses to do everything they can to stay safe – online and offline.

Through targeted push notifications, businesses that download the app will be informed of credible threats to their operations, including cyber-threats, traffic, and protestor activity, and be given accurate sector-specific guidance within minutes.

The app, which has been developed with support from the Scottish Government, will be especially beneficial to businesses which have heightened concerns around cyberattacks and other threats to business activity as COP26 approaches.

It will provide notifications coded into red, amber and green levels of priority to better inform businesses and allow them to distinguish which alerts will require immediate action and those that will require monitoring.

The tailored alerts are powered by user insights gathered at registration through a brief multiple-choice questionnaire capturing their industry, location, and specific concerns or challenges they may be facing. Using these details, the app will only share relevant threat insights with users.

The insights received by users through the app will be contributed from organisations including Police Scotland, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, the Scottish Government and the CyberScotland Partnership.

Recommended

• 6 mindset changes needed to make the most of digital transformation
• New tech could make Scotland world leader in green steel
• Scottish Highlands opens the largest IT service centre in Europe

Jude McCorry, CEO of SBRC, said: “Our aim at SBRC is to ensure that no Scottish business fails because of lack of knowledge or support when it comes to their resilience.

“When the pandemic hit, there was an incredible amount of detail shared with businesses which, at times, may have been overwhelming or only applied to the few rather than the many. We’ve taken learnings from this on how important it is to keep the business industry informed of the updates that directly affect them.

“We will provide push notifications with red, amber, and green alerts of any new guidance or incidents that may impact operations, including cyber-incidents or major crimes.”

The app will provide users with quick access to SBRC’s Cyber Incident Response Helpline, created in partnership with Police Scotland and the Scottish Government, aimed at providing rapid support to SMEs who believe they may have fallen victim to a cyber-attack and need urgent advice.

The option to join a LinkedIn community, where advice and best practice will be shared by SBRC and partners, will also be available. A library of guidance documents on subjects such as cybersecurity, working from home and social media reporting has also been built into the app.

Get the latest news from DIGIT direct to your inbox

Our newsletter covers the latest technology and IT news from Scotland and beyond, as well as in-depth features and exclusive interviews with leading figures and rising stars.

We will keep you up to date on the pivotal issues impacting the sector and let you know about key upcoming events to ensure that you don’t miss out on what’s going on across the Scottish tech community.

Click here to subscribe.