REG - Crossword Cybersec - New Customer National Nuclear Laboratory

Crossword CybersecurityAnnouncement

14/12/2021 07:00

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RNS Number : 0500V  Crossword Cybersecurity PLC  14 December 2021

National Nuclear Laboratory Improves Supplier Onboarding and Risk Management
With Rizikon from Crossword Cybersecurity

Accelerated and consistent supplier onboarding, with new insights into
supplier risk for procurement and supplier management teams.

 

 

14 December 2021 - London, UK - Crossword Cybersecurity Plc
(http://www.crosswordcybersecurity.com/) (AIM:CCS, "Crossword", the "Company"
or the "Group"), the technology commercialisation company focused on cyber
security and risk management, today announced that National Nuclear
Laboratory (https://www.nnl.co.uk/) (NNL), the government owned but
operationally independent UK national laboratory for nuclear fission, is using
Rizikon Assurance (https://www.global.rizikon.io/) , Crossword's supplier
assurance and third-party risk management platform, to bring new efficiencies
to its supplier onboarding and management processes.

 

NNL has been creating a culture change in the way it serves its customers, and
engages supply chains to maintain a solid reputation, be agile, reliable, safe
and innovative, managing hundreds of supplier contracts across the full
nuclear lifecycle. Some of these suppliers are small, but offer highly
specialised services to the nuclear sector, whilst others are international
organisations on multi-year contracts for construction, maintenance, and
decommissioning projects.

 

A typical onboarding process requires a supplier to complete a host of forms
about every aspect of its business operations, which can be time consuming to
manage for all parties, leading to delays, complications, and poor visibility
of risks.  As one of the most highly regulated and closely monitored sectors,
NNL is constantly working with suppliers to ensure they have the correct
processes and insurance in place, as well necessary industry certifications,
such as ISO 27001 for information security management.

 

Rizikon is a secure, encrypted portal which puts an organisation in control of
managing risks in its supply chain and the financial, regulatory, and
reputational risks they indirectly carry. Rizikon contains standard
questionnaires on subjects such as cyber security, GDPR, supplier on-boarding,
modern slavery, and anti-bribery & corruption.  Customers can also create
their own question sets and scoring approaches, enabling a 360-degree view of
supply chain risk in a single pane of glass.

Fast onboarding and credit checking

NNL is also using the credit checking features of Rizikon, which uses direct
integration with Creditsafe to provide an instant status report on a
supplier's creditworthiness during the onboarding process from a database of
over 320 million companies worldwide. This step is particularly important
given the long-term nature of projects in the nuclear industry, where NNL
needs to minimise the risks of working with suppliers whose long-term
financial future and previous performance needs to be independently verified
and can be very time consuming.

 

Better risk visibility

NNL contracts are banded, with all gold and silver contracted suppliers now
onboarded into the Rizikon platform.  The holistic nature of the Rizikon
platform means that NNL as the contracting authority can demonstrate the risk
profile and status of suppliers at any time, and with ease, as well as
identify risk issues across an entire contract group.

 

Victoria McConville, Senior Business Analyst - Procurement, at NNL, said:
"Rizikon has helped us make our supplier onboarding processes more efficient,
improving the consistency of communications with suppliers, which has given us
insight into new ways of reviewing risks. NNL can manage any query related to
the completion of assessments securely through this platform, which makes the
process quicker and more efficient, especially with features such as credit
checks, and integration with Dark Beam for cyber security audits.

 

"As the programmes we deliver continue to increase in scale and complexity, we
are developing our ability to deliver on time, quality and cost, whilst
upholding a strong track record in safety and security. Being what a national
laboratory should be - putting value first, whilst maximising our capabilities
for the benefit of all."

 

Rizikon's ease and evolution

NNL was able to start working with Rizikon, as it is a cloud-based SaaS
platform.  One of the key features of Rizikon is its ease of use, which is
critical when asking a supplier network to adopt a new onboarding process.
All assessments are completed through a secure web browser connection,
intuitive and able to be left at any time, to return to the same position
later.  Suppliers can easily insert comments to raise queries, which are
immediately delivered to the assessing organisation for review.

 

McConville concluded: "We can see new ways that Rizikon can support our
procurement and risk processes going forward, and it great to have this
supplier data stored consistently in one place.  We were able to get up and
running very quickly with the platform, and the development team at Crossword
has been very responsive to suggestions for feature additions and
improvements."

 

Sean Arrowsmith, Group Sales Director at Crossword, commented: "Nuclear is one
of our most highly regulated and security conscious industries, so attention
to detail and efficiency in the supplier onboarding process are critical.
Through its use of Rizikon, NNL is gaining a more efficient onboarding process
that allows procurement staff to have a simplified view of risks in contract
groups, and therefore focus on the higher value aspects of efficient supplier
management, rather than the time-consuming administrative headaches."

ENDS

Contacts

Crossword Cybersecurity plc - Tel: +44 (0) 20 3953 8460

Email: info@crosswordcybersecurity.com

Tom Ilube, Chief Executive Officer

Mary Dowd, Chief Financial Officer

 

Grant Thornton (Nominated Adviser) - Tel: +44 (0) 20 7383 5100

Colin Aaronson / Daphne Zhang

 

Hybridan LLP (Broker) - Tel: +44 (0)203 764 2341

Claire Louise Noyce

 

For media enquiries contact:

Lorena Duke, GingerPR

crossword@gingerpr.co.uk (mailto:Crossword@gingerpr.co.uk) - Tel: +44 (0)1932
485 300

 

About Crossword Cybersecurity plc

Crossword Cybersecurity (https://www.crosswordcybersecurity.com/) plc focuses
on the development and commercialisation of university research-based cyber
security and risk management related software and cyber security consulting.
The Group's specialist cyber security product development and software
engineering teams work with its university partners to develop the research
concept into a fully-fledged commercial product that it will then take to
market. The Group's aim is to build up a portfolio of revenue generating,
intellectual property based, cyber security products. Rizikon Assurance
(https://www.rizikon.io/) , Crossword's leading product, is a SaaS platform
that enables medium to large companies to assess and manage all risks from
their suppliers.  Nixer CyberML, another Crossword product, is a new tool for
businesses that want to solve advanced security and cybercrime problems, such
as detecting and dealing with compromised accounts, fraud, and in-application
denial of service attacks.  Identiproof, Crossword's most recent product, is
the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) verifiable credentials compatible
middleware and wallet technology. Crossword's team of expert cyber security
consultants leverages years of experience in national security, defence and
commercial cyber intelligence and operations to provide bespoke advice
tailored to its clients' business needs, including threat monitoring.

 

 

About National Nuclear Laboratory

NNL is the UK's national laboratory for nuclear fission. Government owned, we
are an operated nuclear services technology provider covering the whole of the
nuclear fuel cycle. With our unique set of skills, facilities and capabilities
- including four world-leading laboratories in North West England - we are
harnessing nuclear science to benefit society.

 

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