From Army Service to Cybersecurity: Francis West's Journey

🎙️ The World of Cyber Security – with Francis West

📺 The World of Lord Russell Podcast Talk Show

🔐 Episode Title: Security Everywhere – Simplifying Cyber Security

Join Lord Russell Baker in this compelling episode as he welcomes Francis West, the Cyber Security National Lead for the FSB, CompTIA mentor, and CEO of Security Everywhere, a UK-based company on a mission to protect 1 million businesses by 2026.

💬 In this episode, we explore:

- Francis’s early influences from his father, a Brigadier in the South African Police

- His military service and transition to building IT businesses in the UK

- The founding and mission of Security Everywhere

- How SMEs are targeted by cyber threats—and how to defend them

- The evolving landscape of cybercrime and AI’s role in cybersecurity

Francis’s work with top UK cyber panels including the UK Home Office, NCSC, and Eastern Fraud Forum

- The values of integrity, partnership, and continuous improvement that drive his company.

🌍 With a 100% protection record across 15 countries, Francis shares insights into staying ahead of threat actors and building resilient digital infrastructures.

📣 Don’t miss this deep dive into the world of cybersecurity, innovation, and digital protection.

🔗 Connect with Security Everywhere:

Website: https://www.security-everywhere.com/

Social Media:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AlwaysBeCyberSafe

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/security-everywhere/

📌 Next Episode: A Tribute to Ray Wilkins MBE – Celebrating the life and legacy of a football legend.

📢 Subscribe to The Lord Russell Baker YouTube Channel for more inspiring conversations and exclusive content:

youtube.com/c/LordBaker?sub_confirmation=1

#cybersecurity #FrancisWest #SecurityEverywhere #LordRussellBaker #FSB #CompTIA #digitalprotection #SMEs #cybercrime #AI #podcast #ukbusiness #cyberresilience

Chapters

• 0:00 Lord Russell
• 0:52 African soldiers security lessons from their parents
• 5:08 Malware expert: I managed to get out of my own company
• 10:16 Cybersecurity for Small Businesses
• 12:01 Francis West: Our Mission to Educate and Protect 100,
• 18:34 Cyber Warfare
• 25:16 Is Cybersecurity Worth Protecting Your Business?
• 30:44 Security Everywhere: 100% Compliance
• 34:07 How to secure your data from cyberattacks?
• 36:41 How to Prevent and Mitigate Cyberattacks
• 41:08 Cybersecurity advisory and guiding
• 42:35 Cybersecurity: The challenge
• 44:44 Security Everywhere: Our Core Values
• 48:02 Mobile Security: More Personal than PC?
• 54:55 What Makes CISCO Different Than Its Competitors?
• 58:29 Cybersecurity: Will AI Affect the Industry?
• 1:05:18 How to get in touch with Security Everywhere
• 1:07:02 Francis West
• 1:09:41 Francis West on the BBC
• 1:09:59 Tribute to Ray Wilkins MBE

Transcript

Lord Russell Baker: Welcome to the world of Lord Russell podcast talk show. And today's show is Security Everywhere Simplifying Cybersecurity with Francis west,

who is the cybersecurity who was, I should say, the cybersecurity national lead for FSB, the Federation of Small Businesses and mentor for CompTIA,

and of course the COO of UK based Security Everywhere. Yes, folks, it gives me immense pleasure to welcome on the show Francis West. Welcome to the show, Francis.

Francis West: Thank you, Lord Russell. I was so looking forward to doing this thing with you today.

Lord Russell Baker: Absolutely. It's an absolute pleasure to have you on the show as well. So I'm sure it's going to be an absolutely fantastic podcast, this for everybody. Well, I'm going to start right from the beginning, Francis.

Your father, who served as a brigadier in the South African police service,

meant that you grew up valuing the importance of security and protection.

I mean, please tell us more about your younger years and the valuable security lessons you learned from your parents.

Francis West: That's an interesting point. Yeah. You know what my dad was, he was a brigadier in the police force. As you already mentioned, he was a very strict man, but, you know, very fair.

And I so wish he was alive today because I've obviously,

I never wanted to follow in his footsteps and go. I did do two years in the army, the national service in South Africa,

but I never ever had the desire to go into the police. I always wanted to fix things or to build things or to sell things.

So I think if he was alive today,

hopefully he would be very proud of the stuff that we do today because it's all online is what he did, but it's just online,

so it's still protecting obviously a lot of people and a lot of businesses.

Lord Russell Baker: Absolutely. And that's quite a good response, really. Obviously, I've got a lot of love for your father and your family. He's taught you so much. And of course you went on to serve in the South African army, not the police.

So Francis, what, what role did you play in the South African army and what key lessons did you learn?

Francis West: Sure,

I, I tell you. So I became, I did a,

the first year I did my junior leaders course, I became a second lieutenant and I was in the maintenance corp in Kimberley.

And then the second year I went back to train the new, new troops and, and I think the best lesson ever was about that whenever you think you're at your end, you know, way close,

that's the first thing. But after two years they wanted me to stay on and I said no. Even if you put a million rand in front of me in cash, I would not do it.

And the funny. The funny thing was about probably two, three years later I left and I came to the uk and they kept on calling me to camp. So my dad, you know, with his typical humor, he said, well, if you pay for his ticket, he'll come back.

But anyway, they never did. And from that point forward, they never tried to.

To recruit me for more camps.

Lord Russell Baker: Wow, that's a good story, isn't it? Really? It just goes to show, you could have. They could, if they had a paid, you would have gone back, would you?

Francis West: Yeah. No.

Lord Russell Baker: That'S going to be the answer.

Francis West: No.

You know, and let me tell you why. So this is a. This is a story that we haven't discussed, but I'll share it with you. It's a deep one, but I'll be short.

Lord Russell Baker: But okay.

Francis West: So in. On the 5th of January,

85, 86.

My closest friend. He was like a brother to me. Grew up with me in Durban,

went to Angola. He was a medic. And he went into the ambush and was killed.

Wow. And I always said that if I have a son, I'll call him Emil, which I did.

So. So I saw a lot of stuff that I just thought, you know,

and even locally where I was based, that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. You know, it's just so many young people died for no reason.

And that was probably my main decision. And also the pfs, the permanent false guys, they were just mental.

They say they break you down to build you up, but they were just insane. And I just couldn't see myself staying there. I just wanted to go out and start a business or do something constructive.

But the learning,

like I said, coming back to the learning,

I would never want to not do it. It was the best two years of my life that I never want to repeat again.

Lord Russell Baker: Okay, well, that's a fair story. It's a fair comment as well, actually, to be honest. Obviously. Do you learn a lot from it? I guess, those two years and. Yeah, to know what you want and what you don't want in life.

Which is brilliant, a learning curve, isn't it?

Francis West: Sorry. And I think, you know, if I had a choice, if I was in government, I would bring that back because I think it turns boys into men and we'll have a lot less crime in uk.

Lord Russell Baker: Yes.

Francis West: If there was such a thing, you know, in the uk. I think it was a great, great experience.

Lord Russell Baker: Yeah. I think national service should be brought Back too.

Francis West: I think it's a beautiful thing for the 30 years.

Lord Russell Baker: Good stuff, really.

You then moved to the UK and set up a successful IT support company. I mean, what was the inspiration right behind, you know, around forming your first UK company And what was the company called?

I couldn't find that anywhere in my research, actually. And what areas of it did you specialize in?

Francis West: Yeah, you know, so I landed with a hundred pounds in my pocket and a return flight ticket.

And luckily by the second night, I found this landscape gardening company and spoke to the owner. His name was Mark Enright. I don't know if he's still alive. And anyway, I was going to work in the garden.

So as I'm walking out the porter cabin, I saw this AMSTRAD computer sitting on the desk.

Lord Russell Baker: Oh, sugar, yeah.

Francis West: And I said to him,

is that a computer? He said, yes.

He said, do you know anything about computers? I said, yeah, I eat them for a living. I don't know why I've said that, but I just came out of my mouth.

Cut a long story short. I started working on the Saturday morning. I worked every day, Christmas Day, New Year's Day, because I had no family here.

And I computerized his entire business. I mean, you name it, I did all the accounts and everything.

And then,

you know,

because of the automation, the computers. I'll tell you another quick story. So,

you know, the computer was very slow.

So at one point I said to him, mark, I need a computer. He says, what's wrong with this one? I said, no, no, it's very slow. He says, oh, but it'll be fine.

Anyway, so one day I copied all the. I duplicated the data so the hard disk space filled up. It was only 20 meg those days. And I showed him the screen, I said, mark, look, I've got no more space, I can't do any more work.

The next day I had a new computer,

but the point is. And then I got into software programming. So my first client in the UK was the clay pigeon Shooting associ.

And I wrote the entire system for them to manage all their shoots and their disciplines and everything else. And from there I went into putting in networks and systems,

wrote some more software.

And the first company was called fwcs Francis West Computer Systems.

Not very original, but there you go.

And then I met my wife, she joined us and then we got into,

you know, more IT support around the uk, got involved with the recruiting sector in a big way.

And yeah, just built it up, built it up from there and then sadly got involved with investor and lost everything.

And that's probably part of my why. Because I got the police involved. Because what they did was they put a keylogger on my office computer. So when I logged onto my home computer.

Lord Russell Baker: Wow.

Francis West: They captured the login detail, then logged in, stole the information from my personal email account and used that against me to get me out of my own company. I built up over 18 years and you know what was interesting was that I had the police involved and I showed them according to the Computer Misuse act of 1990,

that they broke it in 11 different places. And you know what they did? They said, sorry, this is a civil case.

Lord Russell Baker: Yep, I thought you were going to say that.

Francis West: And they got away with everything. So I started from zero in 2010, literally zero. I was putting little ads up at the local news agents and just building up the business from there.

Lord Russell Baker: That's some start in life, isn't it? It really is. I mean that really is an impressive story.

It was a bad story, but impressive. I mean you then went on to form a UK based company again, your second company,

trading as Security Everywhere, which provides managed cyber security services.

So please tell us more about the formation and initialization of security everywh where the fork came from as well.

Francis West: Yeah, there's a little bit before that. So. So the new company which is the holding company is called Westech Solutions now Westec again. So we, I then met my business partner, fellow South African, the year in 2011.

Yeah. And, and we decided to, to do similar to what I did before because funny enough, I met him in a meeting at a, at a client in the old company and he gave me such a hard time, you know, one of those people that kept on asking those questions you never want to be asked.

But anyway, so we built up a new managed service provider again focusing on the recruitment sector.

But two years before COVID we just saw this massive,

what I can only call as a tsunami of cyber attacks on our existing IT support clients. And at that point I said to my business partner,

we need to change focus.

We need to set up another entity Security, where we came up with a name,

you know, to focus purely on delivering what we call enterprise level cybersecurity services to smaller businesses. Why?

Because we, you know,

of the strong belief that small businesses should have the same level of protection as Barclays and NASDAQ and Netflix.

And that's what we've achieved today or have done for the last six, seven years. And I'm glad to say we're sitting at 100% success rate since then of protecting our clients.

Lord Russell Baker: Yeah, because the statement is that security everywhere as a company does have a mission statement to protect medium sized businesses from criminal attack by international hackers.

Please explain more. You've done partly gone into that there, Francis. Explain a bit more about that. Why medium sized enterprises, not corporates, for one thing.

Francis West: That's a good question. Well, I'll answer both questions. The first one is about smaller businesses.

Like I said, they are. They don't know what they don't know.

The larger companies should, or you would think, you were thinking the Marks and Spencers and people like that should have departments in place.

But their challenge was. That's a long story, but complete under investment.

So that's why we saw the market as smaller. I mean, we've got much larger clients now as well with thousands of users. But it's the smaller businesses that really, really need our help.

But what are there 5 million small businesses in the UK? There's a million in London alone.

And they still see McAfee and Norton and all these other. Because the marketing is good, but they haven't kept up. So unfortunately that's why people get hacked.

So that's your first problem. Your second problem is that they looked after by IT person or company or department and sadly, this is not sad. It's good for us.

It's a specialist area because every time we get a new client, they said, but I thought my IT company had me covered. And my, my response is always,

why do you want to blame the electrician when the roof starts leaking?

Do you know? And I think this is why I love doing these podcasts, because it's, it's,

it's one with this, one thing I can get people to, to, to take away is please seek professional advice when it comes to protecting your business and yourself.

But coming back to the mission,

my first mission, and there's a story, of course, here I was sitting in a security meeting in London. I'm part of the wcit, the worshipful company, Information technologists. And I'm sitting in this room and we're introducing, you know, go around that MI5 was there, MI6 was there,

the chair was,

was Roy Isabel. Now Roy Isabel was at the time the senior professor for cyber at Warwick University.

Anyway, so we go around, I stand up and say, my name is Francis west and my mission is to educate and protect 100,000 people from cybercrime.

And there's a pause there and he says, Francis, only 100,000, it should be at least 10 million. I said, I Tell you what, Roy,

I'll settle at a million,

which we did by last October.

So we've done a million people, but now we want to do a million businesses. So that's our new mission.

Lord Russell Baker: Ah, fantastic. What a mission that is too.

I mean, as we both know, cybercrime doesn't discriminate. Neither do, of course, Security Everywhere is a business.

At Security Everywhere, you formed a team of dedicated security professionals who are passionate about safeguarding business or businesses from the ever evolving threat of cybercrime. So please tell us more and how do you keep up to date with the latest cyber attack vectors, for example, and threat actors?

And let's talk about the Chinese, if you like as well, and all the other indiscriminate organizations.

Francis West: Well, Chinese, North Korea, I mean, I don't know if you know, but North Korea funds the entire nuclear program.

Cybercrime. One of my favorite podcasts that I listened to, and I was listening to this only this morning, is Darknet Diaries.

Yes. And also, have you listened to the Lazarus heist?

It's a BBC.

I cannot recommend Hyde. It's a BBC documentary times two.

And they talk specifically about the Lazarus heist, as in the group within North Korea, and how they implant people around the world in big corporates around the world. And if those people don't do what they do, they simply kill their entire family.

That's the threat, you know, so it's serious stuff.

But,

you know,

like you said, it's not just the amount of attacks that we see now.

If I compare it to say, last year, every four seconds, there was one unknown threat, or what they call zero daily attacks today.

And this is, I think, understated.

There's four every second.

Yeah,

you know, and if you look at,

I read an article the other day, if you look at the cost of cybercrime in every country around the world, it now makes up for more than 60% of all crime.

So this is not. It's only going this way. So China and so how do we keep up? That's a good question. So like I said, I personally serve on seven different security panels,

so there's a lot of interaction there.

I also serve on multiple cyber resilience centers, which is really good.

I've done over 500 talks and things like this, or at least now I've stopped counting at 500 since the beginning of COVID So I think it's just eating, sleeping, dreaming,

and just consuming as much information and then having the ability to prevent the problem.

And that's what we do.

Lord Russell Baker: I'M sorry, I guess as well some consolidation with NCSC as well, isn't it? Because they're obviously at the front end, the nerve end of cybercrime.

And if you've got your affiliation with them, which I know you do, then they're obviously a great source of the next level of threats, aren't they?

Francis West: They are. I mean,

and again, you know, they do such amazing work and especially also with the cyber,

with the nine cyber resilience centers.

But again, the message is not landing. And the reason why the message is not landing, I believe is because they targeting the wrong entities to make the or to help land the message.

And my advice to them, because we were at the London Business show exhibiting last year and the National Cybersecurity center representative actually came to talk to us for almost an hour and they all have the same problem.

And I said to them my solution is as follows.

We need to educate the two closest supply chain or suppliers to any size business and those are the IT company and the accountant.

If we educate those people and then get them to bring it down to their 20, 50, 100, 200 clients, then we'll have a better reach.

Does it make sense?

Lord Russell Baker: Yeah, it does. It's interesting you say the accountant. I mean accountants just like to deal with money.

How, how would you go around, you know, educating an accountant around cybercrime?

It's going to cost money.

They're going to be, oof. I'm not sure about spending that.

Francis West: Yeah,

it's, you know, with all the recent cases on TV with co op and obviously mass defenses in also BBC. I love the, I don't know if you watch BBC news in the morning.

I'm normally up at 5:30 and a lot of times I stand there and I record the screen and I do LinkedIn posts on it.

But BBC is doing fantastic work. The other one I love is Scam Interceptors.

You know, I think those guys are based in Scotland.

They should be knighted as far as I'm concerned. You know, I love my sixth sense of humor when it comes to dealing with scammers. My record is 18 minutes the other day keeping them on the phone because I know as long as I keep them on the phone, they won't phone some person that's completely oblivious to what's going on,

you know. So I now also record my course. Some of my recordings are being used for training because I work closely with Hertfordshire, Cambridge and Bedfordshire cyber police units,

you know, so I've done talks with them and also they're using these examples that I give them in their training.

But how do you, how do you educate accountant? You know, I think it should come all the way down from the icaew.

Do you know that?

You know, we need again from the top down.

Lord Russell Baker: Yeah, I agree.

Francis West: That's the only way.

Lord Russell Baker: So the likes of the CEO should be educated, shouldn't they really?

So it actually pushes onto the CFO and the financial directors, the owners, the chairman of companies need to be fully aware of the threat of their business and you know, that needs to be instilled into the accountants or the financial directors minds.

So when it comes to spending money, which is an investment in the business, actually, let's be honest,

it is not wasted money, it's purely an investment in your business.

So a great investment it is too, to protect yourself from cyber. Cyber warfare, which is what it is, is warfare.

Francis West: Well, it is, you know, you know, there's a, there's a client just literally about 300 meters from our office in Apsley and they make, they call Kent Brushes, I'll name them because they, they, they.

A friend of mine works there. Right, yeah. And they were actually, they, they got done for 1.6 million last year and they, the way the attack came in is they got an email and they paid an invoice, multiple invoices actually.

Anyway, couple of. I'll keep it short if you. I did a check on them only recently and still I can impersonate anybody in that business. I can send email as the chairman, the CEO.

And I sent, I sent them an email, I said, listen, I'm down the road from you,

let's go for a beer at the Paper Mill Pub.

Never heard from them, you know.

Yeah, but no, they, they, they, they, you know, somebody, when I spoke to my friend, he said, no, no, they got somebody into, to sort it out,

but still they're completely open to attack.

Lord Russell Baker: Yeah.

Francis West: Do you know, so they're oblivious.

Lord Russell Baker: Or even that financial hit, which is a lot of money that could take companies down quite seriously.

It's a lot of money to be, to be scammed out of and they're still basically making the same errors they haven't cleaned up.

Francis West: And that's because they're not seeking professional advice or,

I don't know, you know, it's just you need to find somebody, eat sleeps and dreams and stuff and then you'll have success. Otherwise,

you know, I had a.

Again, you can see I've got a lot of stories.

So I rate the Israeli cyber companies very highly.

But this company phones me up, they said, can we have a meeting? Because we'd like you to sell our services in the uk,

meantime. They're already supplying nhs,

a lot of hospitals, a lot of big companies in the uk.

Whilst I was on the call,

Lord Russell,

I sent him an email from his CEO. I said, have a look at your inbox.

I tell you what, he went completely white.

Because I love to do live demos, right. But the point. And I said to him, you know, with the greatest respect to you,

if you don't have the basic security in place, I'm talking about outbound email security now, how could I possibly engage with you as a partner? Because my reputation is surely just as important as yours.

But how can a cyber company. This is all about supply chain. And this is why the likes of St. Thomas's Hospital got done,

because of a single supplier that wasn't protected properly.

And that's how they got in,

you know, and people. There was a person that died as a direct result of it.

Lord Russell Baker: Yeah. It's a shocking, shocking,

shocking tale, isn't it, really? But of course, your local company that you just talked about,

you know, seriously lost one point. Was it six? 1.2 million last year?

Francis West: 1.6 million, yeah, yeah.

Lord Russell Baker: I mean, they're just the tip of the iceberg. That's just one company in the uk, that's probably one company out of many that are in the same situation,

that are suffering,

losing money and doing nothing about it.

And, you know,

so it makes you wonder what they're doing sometimes, you know, where's the lead coming from with those businesses?

There has to be more lead there, doesn't it, somewhere.

Francis West: What do you mean by lead?

Lord Russell Baker: Well, I mean, in terms. When I say lead, I mean someone, you know at the top there who's got some control over these type of attacks because it's affecting the business and that then drives down into the rest of the business.

You've got to do something about this. We can't afford to lose this sort of money. Our reputation as well is at stake. So it's not just finding answer. Is reputational loss too.

Francis West: Yeah.

Lord Russell Baker: What clients they've got. I mean, are they going to want to do business with them if they've been attacked? You know, so there are these thoughts that, you know, leaders of companies, chairman, CEOs, need to think about and to push that down into the depth of the company.

Not just to the accountants, but also to you people who can go out and source, for example, your services. Francis,

try find security everywhere. Besides, important story isn't is, you know.

Francis West: And it's sad because I'll give you another recent case study.

You know, this lady, I won't mention the name, she runs a recruitment company, 18 staff. Anyway, times are tough. This happened last year and you know, she was scaling down, scaling down, scaling down.

Eventually said, listen, now I'm going to close the office and da, da, I'm so it's fine.

So she went home and this was January last year. So January, she phones me up, her name is Kelly, I won't mention surname.

And she said, France. She was in tears, she was crying on the phone and I ******, what's up? I said, because before she left, I said, please, whatever you do,

just even if you're a single person, just leave our security layers. And they would have cost her 51 pounds a month. That's it. Okay. Anyway,

she phones me up in tears, I thought, because I've met the husband of kids, you know, and, and, and I thought somebody's died. Anyway, she said, franco, I need your opposite work.

She says, I've just lost £91,000. So they got into an email system, changed two invoices for me because she does very high level recruitment placement to this firm in the US and the US company paid the money straight into the hacker's bank account.

And she wanted me to prove to her customer that it didn't. I said, no, I can see here because I did forensic analysis. I could see the email coming from her because she removed all the security.

So now she's back as a client. But I'm like, can you divide £91,000 by £51 and see how many years that will pay?

And I think this is the thing, people don't realize the true cost, never mind the financial cost. It is,

you know, people have to take their kids out of private school.

You know,

it is devastating. And the point is this problem is fixable,

very fixable.

Lord Russell Baker: And you know, I can tell you now, I mean, having worked in the security space for many years myself, you know, a senior level,

you know, as the former chief of cyber security, head of cybersecurity, the home office, for example, for 18 months, interim, and educating people in the home office around the different, you know, different environments was something, I can tell you, it really was something.

But what you quickly realize is that everybody in business always looks at security as an evil.

Oh,

all that does is going to stop us doing business,

gets in the way. Those security people are, you know, just stopping us doing business. No, we're not. We're actually helping you to do business.

And you suddenly realize that as you've just said that when sank happens they lose lots of money.

All of a sudden their business is in tatters.

So you know, I went around most parts of the home office distilling against them. For example security by design put the processes together, the policies, the standards.

I had once a month meetings with the head of policing to talk and collaborate and bring things together. So we're all operating on the same table if you like really from a security point of view and that was brilliant.

But the amount of people,

even at that level,

certain senior people just would not listen. Take it on board. No security gets in the way. We've got to do it. We know, but we'll try and get around it if we can.

That's the message you get. It's amazing.

Francis West: But you know what? I'm seeing the opposite as well. So one of our recruitment clients, 60 odd users,

they just sold for a higher multiple because when the company that bought them did their due diligence they said they've never found a company that's secure.

So he used that as a lever to increase his price, which I'm still waiting for my bottle of whiskey or whatever one day.

And this is where I now team up with M and A companies or you know,

or with companies that are buying businesses. I said let's do a cyber audit even externally because I can tell you in seconds I'll just do a few checks and I know exactly what's going on there.

I don't even to go inside but especially with let's say again going back to recruitment or a lot of some other business. If I can buy this their data on the dark web, why should I pay you a pound for your business?

Lord Russell Baker: Yeah, exactly.

Francis West: Do you know so but the opposite is true. So if your business is very secure you number one you should use it as a marketing thing because you are now investing heavily and you're making sure that your clients data is safe.

And because data is worth more than gold.

It is,

so it's worth protecting. But it's because they can't see it and they think oh no, no.

Or you know, they're using just Microsoft and they think well Microsoft is you know, doing security.

They're doing a little bit, but they are. I mean we just did an audit for one of our large clients with 5,000 mailboxes and we did a 12 week, well we call it email security review which we don't even charge for.

We found 1700 attacks that came through Microsoft's security as in 3 Office 365 and it was flagged as green and went straight to the inbox.

1700 in a 12 day period.

Do you know that's a lot. I mean,

and my new.

And the guy said, oh, but There was only four or five McMalware. The other were all phishing attacks leading to a deeper attack.

And my new idea was, and I told him this on the call, I said,

tell me, how many stones did it take David to kill Goliath?

Lord Russell Baker: Good analogy.

Francis West: And he just smiled. And I'm like, it just takes one.

Lord Russell Baker: One. Exactly.

Francis West: One email, one text message, one click and you're done.

Lord Russell Baker: Exactly.

Francis West: You know, and our whole model is to make sure that the members of the team or the staff never see those attacks in the first place.

Lord Russell Baker: Exactly right.

Francis West: That's how you fix the problem.

Lord Russell Baker: Because once you've got into the company big, particularly the big, the big companies, people sitting behind their desks doing their day to day jobs, they won't look and check email addresses, they won't look and check the obvious fraudulent parts to the email.

They'll go and click on the link. Of course they will of course see it as normal business and then you're done.

Francis West: And then they tell me, oh, but we do awareness training.

I'm like, that's great. So how do you train a five year old boy or girl not to walk over the air in 25? I'll tell you how you fix this problem.

You just pull two walls either side so they can't do it.

Lord Russell Baker: Exactly right, Exactly.

Francis West: And you know, my other. I've got many taglines, prevention is the only cure.

Lord Russell Baker: Yeah, it is. I quite agree, fully, completely agree with that, Francis.

Amazing stories. I mean of course also at security everywhere. Your mission is to protect 1 million businesses by 2026. I mean previously you said you got to your 1 million people this year,

next year, 1 million businesses by 2026. I mean that's some target. So where are you now with this and will this impressive target be achieved in 2026? It's just that around the corner next year.

Well, we still five months away.

Francis West: Exactly. Well, I'm bargaining on the end of 2026.

Lord Russell Baker: Wow. The same thing actually.

Francis West: But then 2026,

we reckon we're sitting around about 300,000 because you know, obviously we're not protecting, but we're giving them a lot of. I wish they were old lines, but they're not.

You know,

it's a lot about education.

So we send out, for instance, you know, again, free, you know, every Sunday we send out cybersecurity tips, which I can send you the link if people want to subscribe.

So, like I said, we post every day on LinkedIn. I do hundreds and hundreds of talks and just to. To show people real,

you know, I've got a yes. People say I'm scary. I said, I'm not scary. It's the topic that's scary. But scaring is caring.

Yes. You know, but the problem is sometimes I think I show people stuff and they get so scared they do nothing.

Lord Russell Baker: But that is common. That's a common human.

Francis West: It is.

Whereas now I'm trying to focus more on the positives, you know,

how about we make sure your share value doesn't go down, you know,

well, let's make sure we keep your kids in private school. So I'm trying really hard, but once you show people how easily it's done, then they get scared and they do nothing.

So I'm still learning to find a better way of getting the message across for people just to take action.

Lord Russell Baker: Absolutely, Absolutely right. I mean, it's. I mean, as you say, it is stated that, you know, security Everywhere has a 100% record for protecting clients in 15 countries all over, you know, over the last seven years.

That's some claim. It's brilliant.

That's a message that you should get out as well. More so both Frances and now. This is a very impressive claim, especially with cyber attack vectors and threat actors changing by the second.

So how do you achieve this? I mean, it's a huge thing, isn't it?

100% is a very impressive record. Well, you are UK and internationally focused, so that 1 million customers is possible. I can see that being possible.

Francis West: Yeah,

well, it's, it's.

I mean, like I said, this has taken us 34 years to get here. So if you add up all the time, times two, if you include my partner's time.

So it's actually easy because if you. Again, if you refer back to the national cyber security or you look at even,

you know, cyber essentials, which is now become absolutely mandatory to so many more businesses, thank goodness. In the uk,

there are five key areas that any business should fix, and that is very simple. First one is computer security. I'm not talking about the known brands, I'm talking about something that actually, number one, works and number two, will give you a ransom guarantee.

Number one.

Number two,

email security. 94 different,

give and take 1 or 2%. I think it's actually more coming by email because email is the only door that you can't close in a business. So we always say you must have a very big bouncer sitting on the outside and the inside to make sure it doesn't come in or go out.

Okay.

And that's our most successful solution, you know, of all.

We did some calculations out of 10 million emails last year that through, that came through our email security solution.

12 emails weren't classified correctly, which my internal team then went back to the company we use and we reclassified them. But we've got a.

So I tell people we our success rated moment of cleaning or making sure that no attacks get into your entire 365 estate or Google Workspaces is sitting at 99.9999%. Yes, yes.

You know, so that's the second layer. The third layer, of course now is mobile security.

So we use a company,

They've already got 233 million installations around the world.

And again, this is part of our whole business model is. So we go out and we look at the top seven, the top 10 solutions that money can buy. That's the best.

And then we test it for 6 to 12 months and only then do we roll it out to our clients. So because people are now three times more likely to click on a message on the phone than on a computer.

Yes. So mobile security,

then of course,

you know, you've got,

you know, backup and recovery. I spoke to this, I'm not going to mention the name to this company that deals with all the airports at the moment and they deal with all the air controllers.

And I'm like,

and again, I did a score within 2 out of 5. So I can impersonate the CEO, I can impersonate anybody in the business.

But, you know, so if you look at that size. So the next is about backup and recovery. And he told me, I said, so how often do you back up your data in 365?

He said, oh, once a week. I said once a week.

So if you lose data, you are going to lose a week's worth of data. How is that a good idea?

So our solution backs up six times a day or up to six times a day. And that to me is a backup solution that's obviously secure because a lot of time when we deal with clients who's been hacked,

their backups are already infected by ransomware or whatever other attacks that's embedded. So when they do the recovery, they just get hacked again,

you know.

Lord Russell Baker: Absolutely.

Francis West: So they don't realize to do that.

Lord Russell Baker: I mean, your software as well, I mean, because you've got this impressive 100% record and we both know that the cyber attack vectors and threat actors are changing by the seconds.

I've previously said the software you use must have quite consistent definition updates on a regular basis.

Just to take into account of all those updates that are changing by the second by minute every day of the week.

Francis West: But let me give you the secret. All our solutions uses AI.

Lord Russell Baker: Yep, brilliant.

Francis West: And we've been doing this for seven plus years.

And why I say it's so different because it looks at behavior. It doesn't need an update in most cases, so it looks at behavior. I'll give you an example. So our computer security, which is rated number one in the world by Gartner,

well, the moment we installed it. And I've got so many case studies I can share with you, one I spoke about even an hour ago.

It will build a pattern of your working model.

So if it knows that you work every, every normally on Monday to Friday,

you start at 8, 30, sometimes finish at 5, 30, 6, 7, it knows when you're working.

So if 2 o' clock in the morning on a bank holiday in August, on a Saturday morning,

all of a sudden files are leaving your computer, PC or Mac. So by the way, I can tell you a lot of Mac stories. Macs are not safe and it's off.

It's to India or China or North Korea.

We see that as attack. Not because your files are leaving, it's because it's completely out of the norm.

Do you see? So we're looking at behavioral changes and this is why this stuff was so effective. Not only that, we back it up with the ransom warranty.

So if they can get through our solution,

we will pay the ransom up to £800,000.

So for me, any solution that you use to protect a PC macro server should have at least a ransom guarantee. Okay,

now if we move on to email, which is even more interesting, and this is why we do a 12 day review,

it goes back the moment we install it, which takes 15 minutes, it goes back two to three months and it looks at again the style of how people write email, who are they receiving emails from?

You know, so it builds up entire picture of how the person works.

So then going forward it does the same.

So the intelligence that's built in, it's just phenomenal. And that's why it's so effective. I mean by just the baseline, it strips out something like 99.8% of just normal attacks.

And we see so often where our clients, clients are getting hacked Email comes in, we block it, they ask for a release request and then we phone. Oh, but I've done business with Francis for 30 years, I trust him.

Please let the email. I'm like, no.

And I think that's another part of our secret sauce. We do the release requests for all our clients and at the moment we are declining 60% of all release requests after we stripped out 99% of the tax already.

Makes sense.

Lord Russell Baker: Yeah, that does make sense.

Francis West: So this is how you fix the problem.

Now, if we move to passwords, for instance, which is one layer I haven't spoken about, again,

having an enterprise level password manager that tells you when your Amazon account has been compromised,

you can then take action and immediately go and fix the problem.

Because people say to me, oh, but I changed my password every 60 days. I said, do you like wasting time?

Okay, what do you mean? I said,

do you change your front key every 60 days of your front door? They go, no. I said, why not? Oh, I haven't done a break in. Precisely.

You should only change your password if you've had a compromise.

Lord Russell Baker: Compromise, yeah. Which is crazy. Absolutely crazy.

Francis West: I mean, most of.

Lord Russell Baker: Sorry.

Francis West: So we monitor the dark web. So every morning when you wake up, first thing it tells you is,

hold on a second,

your account's been compromised, go and change it now.

Yeah.

You know, and that's how you fix the problem. So.

So you asked me the question, how do you fix the problem? It's all about layers.

Lord Russell Baker: Yes.

Francis West: You know, because hackers, I mean, especially now with AI kicking in, I mean, I can tell you about probably three or four different bots similar to ChatGPT.

I mean, the one that was released last year was Worm GPT and there's multiple others now that's specifically designed for hackers and scammers to automate the process themselves.

Lord Russell Baker: Absolutely.

Francis West: It's just going from here to there at an exponential level. I don't want to even start talking about Quantum, because that's another story.

Lord Russell Baker: That is another story. I mean, I'm a great user of AI myself, so I know the value AI has.

But you know, as a normal person, not as a criminal. But of course, the crim. Getting into the criminal's hands. Devastation this could cause is phenomenal, isn't it? It really is.

It's quite scary, to be totally honest with you.

Francis West: And you know what, the thing is, a lot of small businesses that we. And I'm talking about sub 50 or even sub 100, you know,

I'm not going to name them, but a massive motor Factor dealer. I mean, they, they were hundreds of trucks and, you know, and I spoke to the owners and they've been in business for 30 years and, you know, they've got no security in place.

And he said to me, francis, I've been in business for 30 years, I've never had an attack. I said, how do you know?

Ask Arnold Clark what happened to them.

Yeah, I quite agree, but the small businesses think, oh, but what data do they need from you? I said, very simple, this. Only this morning, I was speaking to an owner of private schools.

He said, oh, well, if my systems go down, it won't be a big problem.

I said, that's interesting.

So you've got a lot of private school children. Yeah.

And their parents are quite wealthy. Yes.

So how do you think it will end for you if.

Because all the parents, payment details and everything is sitting on your database. Yes.

How do you think they'll feel if a hacker gets into your system and all of a sudden they use you as a conduit to get into their systems?

Yep, absolutely.

The reputational damage that you'll suffer. You don't even want to go there. And I tell you what, he looked at me and he just walked off.

But I'm like, he didn't think it. He doesn't.

He didn't think of it in that manner.

No.

Lord Russell Baker: It's one of those head in the sand moments, I guess, really. Francis, you know, doesn't want to go there.

Well, he wish he had when it happens, because inevitably it will happen at some point.

Francis West: So no private schools are getting done. You know what I find so sad,

especially with what I call the normal schools, state schools and colleges and university,

they can't afford.

If I won 168 million pounds tomorrow on the lottery, I would help so many charities and schools put in systems at work.

They just can't afford to fix it.

Lord Russell Baker: That's right, exactly. They can't.

Francis West: Yeah.

Lord Russell Baker: That's just a sad sort of story.

Francis West: It is. And that's just, you know, but at some point, hopefully somebody will listen and invest some money and let's fix it properly.

Lord Russell Baker: Absolutely. And hopefully they'll come to you and they'll have the real experts to help them out. I mean, Francis, you personally serve, I know you mentioned this earlier, a little bit serve on seven cybersecurity panels, including the UK Home Office,

WCIT and Cyber Resilience Centers, and of course, the Eastern Fraud Forum as well. I mean, this is a great, great achievement as we've just been talking about, really, as advising and guiding is always a great place to be.

And of course, taking up much of your time, ensure you are up to date with the latest cyber risks too, because you've got to be up to date, haven't you?

Otherwise you can't do the right advising and guiding.

But you've kind of explained so much of that so far on the show already, haven't you? Around that.

Francis West: Yeah.

Lord Russell Baker: So what are your. What are the biggest cyber threats globally now? And what do you envisage in the future as weapons of mass business destruction, which, like, they are. What do you envisage moving forwards?

Francis West: Like, I mean, there's so many answers to that question. The challenge we have again is,

number one, awareness.

Awareness, in other words. And that's why I'm so grateful for doing the session, the podcast with you today, because hopefully we'll reach more people that we start taking and get this message and take this seriously.

But, and also,

you know,

and I know I've mentioned this a few times, is to not rely on your IT team, unless you've got a. They've got a specialist cyber department,

you know,

then seek professional advice.

So the attacks are increasing by the second. We know that for a fact.

And, you know, I always tell the story of the lion. Did I tell you the story of the lion?

Lord Russell Baker: I don't think you have yet, Francis. You're going through now.

Francis West: So when the lion is chasing you, Lord Russell, what do you have to do?

Lord Russell Baker: Run.

Francis West: You've got to run for answer.

Lord Russell Baker: Right.

Francis West: But I'll tell you what else you've got to do. You've got to outrun the person behind you and hopefully that's not the family member. Right?

Lord Russell Baker: Yeah.

Francis West: Because guess what? The line will go for the first person can reach.

Now, in my head, cyber works on the same logic, so if you've got multiple layers around you, they'll simply go somewhere else. It's like when a thief drives down the road,

they're going to go for the houses without the ring doorbell, without cctv recovery without a dog, simples.

So it doesn't matter what type of attack, increase of attack,

they go after the easy targets. Unless it's government or they want to get some biometrics, you know, biochemical information or government, that's a different story. I'm now referring mainly to businesses and to people.

So does that answer your question or not?

Lord Russell Baker: Yeah, no, it does. That's a fantastic answer. I fully appreciate that answer as well. I mean, that's an understandable one. Well put for people to understand when they listen to the show.

So thank you for that, Francis.

Your company, Security Everywhere proudly refers to core values around integrity,

partnerships and continuous improvement. And can you please tell us more about these core values that you have within your company? Because they are good values, aren't they? There's no doubt.

Francis West: Yeah, yeah, I believe so, 100%. You know,

especially, I mean, we've got one of the ones we don't do publicly, but if I may swear a little bit, no ******** allowed, you know, so, so, you know, we, obviously,

we take what we do very seriously.

Lord Russell Baker: Of course you do.

Francis West: And, and, and one thing that happened before COVID after we made this massive decision to, to do the transition to, to really take this stuff seriously,

we went to all our clients around the country and we said, listen,

I know you've got this in place. We've got the normal antivirus and normal. But that's not enough. We now need to put this in place. This is the new stack for cybersecurity.

And I can't tell you, we wiped off back then probably £100,000 worth of net profit, because some of these clients have said, are you just trying to sell us some more stuff?

And I said, no, I'm dead serious.

So we now at a point where, and even with our existing,

we've still got a few. We've got 30 IT support clients left.

They all now run our entire stack because we said that if you want to do this properly, this is what you need.

If you don't want to take it, I'm really sorry, but we can no longer help you.

So, you know, we stick by what we say from an internal perspective. You know, we live,

we breathe, dream,

everything we touch is about helping people.

Both,

not necessarily only internally. So we've got a new marketing lady apprentice that started two months ago and she didn't know how to spell cyber. I'm joking. But, you know, and the amount she's learned in the last two months has been phenomenal because we thought, finally, we need to get a permanent person internally just to help us get out there more and do more events and breakfast events and just educate more people,

even though they don't buy from us as far as.

So it's, it's. Yeah, we. We just, we just do what we say South African style. You know, just do it,

get on with it.

Lord Russell Baker: And it is about education, it is about yourselves going out,

not waiting for the phone to ring or to get a request via email or. We like your services. Come and see us. Yeah, you've got to go out and educate.

Haven't you got to be part of these forums? You've got to go out there and do that, that grunt work really getting your message across and doing it very regularly as well.

Because people do shut down, they don't listen.

And I was once told wasn't, I'll tell you a story now, I was trained by an actor how to present and how to act on stage and do all the good stuff, you know,

that I like to do these days. And he said, what do you got to do is you got to tell them what you're going to tell them. This is a selling technique now then tell them what you're going to tell them and then tell them what you've told them so that you're putting over three messages at the same time and when they leave they should understand and remember what you said.

Do you know what that works?

And I was taught that probably some 20 odd years ago and that really I use it still today that way of getting the message across to people. Tell them what you're going to tell them.

Tell them and then tell them what you've told them. An important way of doing it.

Francis West: It's great advice. You know what's so nice for me now?

So this one large client that we're busy onboarding,

probably 3,000 new clients in the next nine months. But anyway the,

because they've, they've taken our mobile security and they've now put it as part of their membership pack. So every time they take on a new member they include our services in there, which is fantastic.

But so I've been in Jersey, I've been Isle of Wight, I've been to Dublin,

all over the country doing talks and what's nice now when I'm phoning these people just to follow up, to see,

you know, they're using these benefits. Yeah, I remember speaking. You, you really,

you know. Because I do a lot of practical examples.

Yes. So people come to me, you know, even when I was an exhibit the other day with, with property markets company, they say I remember you, you spoke there and then, you know, I've done this and this and this, you know, so they tell me what they've done.

They didn't buy any services but that's another story. But they implemented a lot of. And because when I speak I always ask people for one favorite and I'll do it again now that whatever you learn here today, please share that with 10 other people and ask those people to do 10 other people and that's how we get the message across.

Because,

you know,

on our YouTube channel, for instance,

you'll find it's. I could read out your. I can give you the link. You know, we've posted hundreds of videos and there's no selling. It's purely educational where we talk about child safety, about password security,

all these different topics.

And we have great speakers as well.

And we did LinkedIn Live sessions for almost two years. I've got so much content,

you know, that people can just go and listen and learn.

But it's, it's,

it's, it's been a long journey and it's, you know,

it's. For me, it's much more personal rewarding compared to,

you know, fixing PCs. That doesn't float my boat at all. But absolutely, people's livelihoods is a different story. That's why.

Lord Russell Baker: Well, not just livelihoods, lives as well. It's actually protecting lives as well as livelihoods. And it's, it's, it's the whole, the whole format really isn't of living. I mean, you know, it's, it's so dangerous now that people's lives are at stake and people do take their lives too, because they can't see a way through these things.

So it's a worrying, worry, worrying stage of the earth that we're on at.

Francis West: The moment,

especially with children. So I've got three children too many now. I'm joking.

But you know, for me,

my kids, I drove, I drove them insane because from a young age, you know, you can imagine, father works cyber security company.

You know, I've had them locked down since day one, but now they starting to appreciate it a lot. But I'm working with multiple. Also one of my favorite charities, if I may mention them, is called Absafe A B S A F E.

This lady,

the director CEO is called Louise Richardson. She's an amazing woman and she based in Scotland.

So whenever I raise any money for my talks, I always give the money to her.

But she deals a lot. She actually goes into schools and does a lot of talks all about safety, physical and online safety. And I'll tell you a quick story about.

She said this to me the other day.

She went into a school and let's say the kids were between 14 and 16 years old.

So let's say there were a hundred kids in the room. Right.

What percentage Lord Russell do you think was sending photos of their private parts to each other at least once a week?

Lord Russell Baker: Well, I'll tell you what, I would think that's probably extremely high, actually 91% I was going to say 95, so it wasn't far out.

Francis West: Yeah.

Lord Russell Baker: So that's huge.

Francis West: Do you know, and then the analogy she uses, which I.

Would you walk naked down the street? No, of course I wouldn't do that. You know, it's just.

And the stuff that the kids are seeing online,

it's a real big topic for me. So I'm now going in partnership with a company who's actually teaming up with Vodafone, who's developed a phone.

It's about £200. It looks like an iPhone, works like an iPhone,

but they can't even take the photo,

you know, of their private parts. And I think this should be mandatory,

you know, for every kid, because it's just sad. The stuff they see, they can't unsee. And I'll give you another example, right,

so we recently dealt with a case where this young girl,

her mom was working from home and she went onto one of these gaming websites where they download these mods. I don't know if you know what mods are.

Lord Russell Baker: Yeah, I do. Yeah.

Francis West: You know, so for the audience, artists, it's where they get extra gaming, extra this, extra that in a game. So she downloaded an infected mod because they were on the same wireless network.

That infection went from her computer onto the.

Onto a. Onto her mom's computer. They're all connected by VPNs. I think VPNs are the most dangerous things because people don't set them up properly.

So that infection went down the VPN tunnel to the head office, from the head office down to every other connected user.

They took out the entire business because of. Wow. And one of my top tips, of course, which I haven't done many yet, is for people at home to create different wireless networks.

Why?

On the same hardware, it won't cost you a penny.

So you set up one WI FI network for your kids, one for your guests, one for you for homeworking. And then, you know, I've got five,

because an infection can't jump from one wireless network to another. So think Covid.

Yeah. You know, so if you're in the same room as somebody who's got Covid before the jabs, you know you're going to get Covid.

And this is how infections spread. And it's such an easy fix,

but people are not even aware that this is possible. It will take you longer to phone Vodafone or BT to ask you to talk you through how to set up another network.

You know, like I said, it doesn't cost you a penny than actually to implement it.

Lord Russell Baker: Yeah, no, I agree. They are easy to set up, aren't they? You got,

it's very simple thing to do. But you're right, not a lot of people know about it, have been educated about it and they perhaps should because that's a great story.

I mean Security Everywhere does have an impressive list of partners as well, Frances, with the National Cyber Security teams of course that include National Cyber Security center, the NCSC itself, FSB Eastern Cyber Resilience center, the UK Home Office as we previously mentioned, and the Eastern Fraud Forum forum as well.

It was a great list of cybersecurity partnerships, France, isn't it? So why should businesses in the UK and overseas choose Security Everywhere as their core security partner? I guess expertise you can trust, affordable excellence and partnership driven approach are key reasons.

So please tell us more,

what makes you better than maybe your competitors? You've probably said quite a bit already, which is impressive.

I think just to highlight how yourselves are better than your,

how would you sell yourselves against one of your key partner,

you know, key opposition companies?

Francis West: Well, I, I would say number one,

you know, when I speak to other companies and you know I take pride in this, I say so how many cybersecurity panels do you serve on?

Lord Russell Baker: Oh, none or one, two exactly.

Francis West: Do you know? So in other words, how much of your personal time do you invest in actually learning or improving your knowledge to make sure your clients are properly protected?

Correct. You know, I could easily not do any of these things but I really enjoy them because I want to contribute so and I want to fix the problem,

you know, at a much higher level even if I don't do it directly through my company.

So.

Lord Russell Baker: You'Re, by educating people you're actually selling your services as well, you're marketing your business. That goes full circle, doesn't it?

Francis West: Yeah, and I enjoy it, I must admit, I really enjoy it. So,

so to answer your question, so that's the first part of the answer. The second one is because we've spent years finding solutions that we know for a fact that works.

And the thing that's different about us as well is we do,

unless somebody wants a longer term contract, all our contracts is on a 30 day rolling contract.

And that's unique because a lot of our solutions, if you go directly, which we'll tell you who we use with pleasure,

you will have to buy a thousand licenses on a 3 agreement. Now how's a 5 or 10 or 50 user company going to be able to afford that? They can't.

Lord Russell Baker: Well they're not, but they can come.

Francis West: To us and get the same protection as Barclays and nasdaq on a 30 day rolling contract, even if they've got five or 10 or 50 staff.

And I believe that's very unique. The other thing is of course that we still believe and know that if you go to our website, which is security-everywhere.com we have the only e commerce website on the planet where you can buy these services today and have it implemented by tomorrow,

fully supported.

Lord Russell Baker: Wow, that's an impressive, impressive business piece in any country.

Francis West: And again, like I said, this is a service, it's not a piece of software you buy, okay? There's software underneath it. But this is why we're successful, because we make sure that the onboarding is done properly, we make sure that the support is there,

we make sure that people are well cared for. We even designed a logo now that people use, you know, protected by security everywhere that people use in their footers. And we just take this stuff very seriously.

You know, we like to have a lot of fun here, but we take this very seriously. And I think that's the thing. If you, if you spend enough time.

Who said that? If you spend 10,000 hours. Who was that? Was it Brian? Tracy?

Lord Russell Baker: I might want to drive. Tracy. Yes.

Francis West: Yeah. Then you get good at something, you know, And I think we spent probably a hundred thousand hours on this now, so we know what works. And I get frustrated when I meet people, they go, you can't fix this problem.

I'm like, but I've been doing it for seven years, I know how to fix this problem,

you know, and we give people guarantees.

So.

Lord Russell Baker: And that's a very good answer. And I think, yeah, that's a very good answer. And I think an impressive business model you've got there, Francis. It all makes perfectly good sense to me.

And of course I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you this question. Of course, and we partly talked about it a little bit earlier on how will artificial intelligence, AI play out in the world of cybersecurity?

What risks do you envisage? I mean, obviously the cyber clowns themselves out there, you know, the threat actors are all going to be start to use AI. What do you envisage, Francis?

Francis West: Well, I can ask that question a lot. So my tagline is you need to use AI to fix AI.

Makes sense. And that's why any solution that doesn't understand behavioral change instantly will suffer or die.

So the only way to combat the massive increase of AI related Attacks is to have a solution that can number one recognize it and then kill it.

So the challenge you have now and again I do a lot of demos on this is that all I need is six seconds of your voice and I can talk like you in different languages.

Lord Russell Baker: Yep.

Francis West: So that's where it's going to get interesting.

Especially phone calls and text messages. You know where people are leaving messages. How do you know it's the person? And I'll tell you an easy fix. I've got the answer again.

And that is if you need to go in the middle of a rugby field with your,

whether it's your business partner or your wife or your kids or both or all, you know, the family and you leave your phones at least 50 to 100 meters away, you take off all your smartwatches and you agree a secret phrase and that secret phrase has to be from 0 to 9 or 1 to 10,

whatever.

And you never write this down. And then if ever you get at a point, because the banks have been doing this for years where you are asked the question, you cannot verify 110% that you're speaking to your son, daughter, business party, you say to them, okay,

give me the third, the ninth and the seventh character of our word.

Nobody on this planet will ever know that information.

Lord Russell Baker: That's true, that's true.

Francis West: And that's how you fix the problem.

Lord Russell Baker: Banks and other businesses do use that today. That is going on today.

Francis West: They do.

Lord Russell Baker: I mean it's a sad thing, isn't it, because you're right about the masquerading of voices. I mean it's so simple to phone somebody up, isn't it? It just say, oh, sorry Mum, I've had to, I've had to change my mobile number because I, yeah, my phone got stolen or whatever it is.

But look, I'm really desperate, can you please send me £250?

So simple.

But, and that's, but you know why?

Francis West: Do you know how that happens?

Lord Russell Baker: I know you're going to tell me.

Francis West: Yeah, so.

Lord Russell Baker: Or tell us I should say.

Francis West: Yeah. So I'm going to tell you what the story, right. I've got many.

So the last was it last year I did a talking at the woman in the state agency. There were 450 women there. I tell you what, I was a bit nervous and I only had 15 minutes.

I was the only male speaker on the day. So I got everybody to take their phones out and I said okay, so you're in the property sector. Yeah,

I bet you never get any personal information via WhatsApp. Up,

I said, let's have a look how secure your WhatsApp account is. So I got them all to open up, go to settings, go to account,

have a look if your two factor authentication is turned on. If I tell you, out of 450 people,

I think maybe 20 people put their hands up.

I said, so if I can get into your WhatsApp account, which is very easy,

then I can start reading all your messages. And that's how Boris Johnson got done, if you remember.

Lord Russell Baker: Okay, Exactly.

Francis West: So I got them all to turn it on,

you know, and,

and even this morning at this meeting with this large company,

they do building, construction and a payroll. I spoke to the, the head of,

of their IT support and you know, head of it, and I got them both to check their phones and the boat had it turned off and they run.

Lord Russell Baker: I'll tell you why I think it is, Francis, because when you, you go sign up to WhatsApp, they advertise that every, every, every phone call, every message is end to end encrypted between you and your, you know, whoever you're speaking to,

they automatically think it's already, it's already switched on.

And you think, oh, I got AES 256 encryption, that's brilliant. It's going to take a billion years to decrypt.

So yeah, so go around thinking they're already got encryption switched on.

Francis West: Yeah, it is a complete mess because, because the data is secure in transit.

Lord Russell Baker: Yeah.

Francis West: It doesn't secure what data goes into the tunnel. And this is why I've got a big issue with VPNs,

because if the device, phone or PC or Mac gets infected, all that will happen is that piece of data. Infected data will go securely down to the other side and infect the other side.

How clever is that? You know? So I agree and this is my big beef that I have with all the social media companies because, you know,

they can fix this problem overnight like Microsoft did last year. They can start forcing people to have this on as a basic level, but they won't. And I'll tell you why.

Because they don't want to support calls. They don't care.

They really don't care. If I was the Minister,

I haven't told you, but one of my two dreams in life is either to become the Martin Lewis of cyber security or the Minister of Cyber in the uk,

whichever comes first.

Because I can share so many ways that people can actually protect themselves better almost at zero cost.

Okay? And it's all about the basics because again, if we look at the statistics,

if somebody wants to hack somebody's WhatsApp account, they'll go after all the accounts that doesn't have two FA turned on. Simple.

Lord Russell Baker: Yeah, exactly.

Francis West: Or Facebook Marketplace or LinkedIn or any of the other accounts.

So that's why when we onboard people on our password manager or security, the first thing we do is we teach them how to put their two FA codes inside the password manager inside a secure vault.

Yeah, so we teach them. And then what we do is we also give their family five free licenses so that from a young age they can teach their kids about how to use 2fa, how to use secure password, how to not use duplicate password.

The basics, I'm talking about the basics here. Now, you know, that's what's missing and that's why people get done.

So forget it, nevermind AI. It's just getting back to basics and putting. And that's what,

that's why I love doing talks and that's why I do a lot of practical sessions with people.

Lord Russell Baker: And that certainly comes across the way you're talking now. You know, the practical stuff's a good way of getting people to understand because we all know people switch off, you know, deaf by PowerPoint, two wordy speeches, people won't listen.

So having the practical piece put in is a great aid, isn't it, to getting your message across. Yeah, so I fully agree with that.

So moving forward, I mean, so how do potential clients get in touch with Security Everywhere? Obviously the Security Everywhere website would be a great starting point.

Francis West: Yeah.

Lord Russell Baker: What other social media do you utilize for business generation and advertising, Francis?

Francis West: Yeah, it's a good question. So we do a lot of stuff on LinkedIn. So both Francis west, if you, if you look at LinkedIn for slash Francis west, you'll see,

you know, all the posts there or the video, it's all educational.

Also our LinkedIn company page, a lot of educational stuff there, YouTube,

a lot of the security everywhere linked YouTube channel channel. And then of course we do.

We've started thanks to Cloudy on the marketing side. We're doing more and more on TikTok and Instagram and all those places.

So I'm in every single channel possible. And like I said, I love doing talks. So people want me to do talks with pleasure.

And then, you know, just to contact us direct, either by phone number, which I can 020-319-50 triple five or the email address. The best one is just supportecurity.com and we'll respond to straight away.

And Just talk to people, help them. We've got so much stuff we can give people. We designed a little,

we call it a three minute cyber health quiz, which again, I'll share the links that if you carry it looks at those five key areas and if you answer them honestly within three minutes you'll get not only your score but you'll also get advice on how to.

How to improve it.

Lord Russell Baker: Sounds perfect. That's great advice too. So hopefully listeners know who listen to the show will have that information to get in touch with you. That's fantastic. So what, what is next in the world of Francis West?

What else? What does the future hold? Maybe not even security may. Well, we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow most of the time, do we? But anything else, you know.

Francis West: I've got a lot of, a lot of people to protect so that's why I'd love to do more rate. I want to get onto radio and television.

Lord Russell Baker: Fantastic.

Francis West: And. And share as much information with as millions of people to. To help them fight cybercrime.

Lord Russell Baker: Absolutely. I mean where you are, you must have local business radio shows you can probably reach out to to go half hour slot with. I know we do here in Norfolk.

I've been on one or two of them myself.

They're great to be part of and you get across to a business audience,

which is useful. Very useful.

Francis West: Yeah. I'm going to Norfolk on Saturdays, by the way,

a very close friend of mine called Frank Furnes and if you ever come across, I'm going to visit him. He's based in Norfolk but.

No, I'm lying, not Norfolk, I'm going there.

Great Yarmouth.

Lord Russell Baker: Great Yarmouth, yeah. That is in Norfolk.

Francis West: Yeah. I thought it was in Norfolk. Yeah. So I'm going to see him but he is an international speaker and I learned a lot from him and we always share tips and tricks.

So my other to answer your question is to travel internationally to do speaking on cyber.

But like I said, my stuff was practical.

I show people on the day how to.

My promise to people always is that they'll walk out infinitely more secure than when they walked in.

Simple as that.

Lord Russell Baker: Promise to have. Simple as that. That's a good promise to give, isn't it? It's a fantastic promise to give. Absolutely. Good for you, Frances.

I think you're doing a great job. I think the company you run in is doing a great job. I've had a look over your website, there's some great examples on there,

as you said. There's some great educational pieces.

People can look at as well. Easy to listen to.

So a lot of freebies there and you offering the world a great service in this very untrusted world of cyber security as we're in at the moment. And yes, it's the World War Three, isn't it?

Cyber security, as we all know.

But as always,

on the World of Lord Russell podcast talk show, we could talk forever, Francis, about our mutual interests in the world of cybersecurity.

And with your aim to create a safer digital world by protecting 1 million businesses by the end of 2026,

it's been a huge pleasure as always. And as always, the pleasure is all min and of course, the show's audience when this podcast is released on the World of Lord Russell podcast talk show and the Lord Russell Baker YouTube channel.

Thank you, Francis. Ladies and gentlemen, I'll give you Francis west and I'll give him a big round of applause here, you know, as you can see, clapping other hands. Well done, Francis.

That's fantastic. Do you mind staying on for a couple of minutes whilst I just wrap up and finish the show and we're gonna have another little chat. Cheers, Francis.

Francis West: Thank you very much indeed.

Lord Russell Baker: You're very welcome.

The next episode on the World of Lord Russell Podcast Talk show is a tribute to Ray Wil Wilkins MBE,

which captures the life of a hugely talented football player who was also a gentleman and still very much missed by all who knew Ray Wilkins in both sport and personal life.

Ray, of course, is a truly celebrated football player and gentleman, playing for Chelsea, Manchester United,

AC Milan, Queen's Park Rangers, Rangers in Scotland, and of course, the England national team with 84 caps, playing in UEFA Euro 1980 and the 1982 and 1986 FIFA World cup cups.

Not forgetting, of course, Ray's appearances on Talksport as a football commentator.

So a great show to look forward to for all. And actually, it's going to be tomorrow as well, folks, because it's a delayed one from May, So another podcast tomorrow and of course, exclusive on the World of Lord Russell podcast talk show in the Lord Russell Baker YouTube channel.

And of course, I'm looking forward to seeing you all on the inside. So until then, it's au revoir from him and au revoir from me.