Beyond Awareness: Practical Cyber Security for Small Businesses

Practical cyber security for small businesses: recognise risk, make safer decisions, use AI wisely and strengthen everyday working practices.

Cyber security problems do not always look like cyber security problems.

They often appear inside ordinary work: an invoice that looks familiar, a supplier asking for access, a phone that goes missing, a customer message being copied into an AI tool, or a request that seems completely legitimate.

Beyond Awareness is a practical, interactive cyber security session for small businesses, being held at The Peel Hotel in Tamworth.

Rather than focusing on fear, jargon or long lists of threats, the session looks at the decisions people make during everyday work and the practical controls that can make those decisions safer and easier.

Participants will work through realistic business situations, explore how modern threats can appear inside familiar processes, and consider how to apply proportionate security without making normal work unnecessarily difficult.

What the session covers

During the session, participants will explore:

• how modern cyber threats can affect everyday small-business activity
• phishing, smishing and deepfake-enabled requests that may look convincing
• how AI can make impersonation and social engineering harder to recognise
• ransomware, OSINT and supply-chain risk
• safer remote working and mobile-device use
• sharing information and giving suppliers or third parties access
• practical ways to secure business accounts, phones, laptops and home-working environments
• preparing for recovery when something goes wrong
• using AI more safely, including what information goes in and how much confidence to place in what comes back
• how to identify one practical improvement that could make cyber security safer or easier within your own business

What makes this session different

This is not a “spot the scam” presentation or a checklist of things employees should never do.

The session uses realistic situations to explore:

• what makes a request feel believable
• what information actually matters
• when a pause or check is worthwhile
• what a proportionate response looks like
• what the business itself can put in place to make safer choices easier

The aim is not to make people suspicious of everything. It is to help people make better-informed decisions when something looks normal, familiar or urgent.

Who is it for?

This session is suitable for:

• small-business owners
• directors and managers
• employees in small organisations
• freelancers and sole traders
• people responsible for customer data, payments, suppliers, systems or day-to-day business operations

No technical cyber security background is required.

Community & micro-business tickets

We want the session to be accessible to smaller local organisations as well as established businesses.

A limited number of Community / Micro-Business tickets are available for:

• sole traders
• freelancers
• charities and community organisations
• micro-businesses with fewer than 5 employees

These reduced-rate tickets are intended for organisations that may find the standard ticket price harder to justify.

No formal evidence is required — we simply ask people to choose the ticket honestly if it best reflects their organisation.

Places are limited and subject to availability.

Delivery style

The session is live, practical and discussion-led, combining concise explanation with realistic scenarios, decision-making exercises and opportunities to relate the learning to your own business.

It will be delivered in person at The Peel Hotel, Tamworth, giving local businesses the chance to learn together, ask questions and work through realistic situations in a practical setting.

No fear. No blame. No unnecessary jargon.

By the end of the session

Participants will have explored how to:

• recognise when a familiar request deserves a closer look
• make safer choices around devices, remote working and third-party access
• understand what common security controls are there to protect
• use AI with more appropriate scrutiny
• identify one area of their own business that could be made safer or easier to follow

Beyond Awareness is designed to help small businesses move beyond simply knowing that cyber risk exists — and towards making safer, more practical decisions when it appears inside everyday work.

Venue: The Peel Hotel, Tamworth