Xcina, a Shearwater Group plc portfolio company which helps companies build digital resilience, has launched Xcina Academy. Xcina, which has offices in Cardiff, has built the training academy on its proprietary ecommerce platform. It will offer SMEs across Wales online and classroom courses ranging from Cyber Awareness and GDPR Refreshers to packages for specific upcoming legislation such as Making Tax Digital. Prices start from £25 per licence.

­Despite increasing awareness of the need for good cyber governance, it is estimated that nine out of ten data breaches in the UK are caused by human error. Xcina is urging company leaders to focus on educating their managers and staff on data breach risk, and the requirements involved in maintaining resilient data and information practices and procedures.

Xcina Academy also provides a Learning Management System (LMS), which has a real-time dashboard outlining progress made across the company. This supports governance assurance and compliance for GDPR and other regulatory frameworks.

Throughout 2019 Xcina Academy will expand into regulatory and business risk management services such as virtual Data Protection Office (vDPO), as well as an online apprenticeship scheme.

The Academy also addresses the recent Senior Manager and Certification Regime, which introduces a duty of responsibility on all senior management to take reasonable steps to prevent and detect regulatory breaches from occurring in their respective areas of responsibility.

Michael (Mo) Stevens, Group Chief Executive Officer at Shearwater and Chief Executive Officer at Xcina, said:

“Xcina Academy is another significant development for us as we continue to drive our national digital resilience agenda. As much of the latest cyber breach research shows, it is employees within organisations that present the biggest vulnerability.

It’s vital, therefore, that individuals understand they could be targeted and that business owners and managers understand that it’s their responsibility to have adequate training programmes in place for their people.

“If companies aren’t compliant with legislation, regulation and industry standards, as part of good practice, then their organisation, their data – and their client’s data – could quickly become compromised.”