Business suppliers operating public contracts within the Pluggin Marketplace, are being supported to deploy their collective staff digital expertise as *knowledge exchange social value in support of cyber safety and resilience efforts within UK communities - a dedicated approach to build the cyber resilience needed within small businesses/social enterprises and charities and for this to cascade out into communities.
Did you know that a large number of UK employers - many who supply our emergency services, local authorities, NHS and criminal justice services - actually operate Employer-Supported Volunteering or ESV as part of staff schemes, paid days per month for community volunteering.
However, not many businesses coordinate this ESV for a brand social value, and struggle to help staff use these days around their busy work and home lives.
When it comes to employers submitting bids for public contracts, they ignore this volunteering despite the time being paid for by employers as worked days.
Imagine
A business employing 100 people, each with an ESV allowance of 4 days per year.
The employer formalises a number of volunteering pathways which aligns to the company's core strengths and collectively the 3,200 hours flows-into the carefully designed knowledge/skills exchange pathways within communities.
The impact from this 3,200 hrs of collective expertise, being embedded into a community of SMEs or charities, would significant.
That's why Pluggin and our public buyer partners are enabling businesses to develop this type of staff volunteering, as a powerful and coordinated social value channelled into a network of SMEs and charities for a purpose.
* The term knowledge exchange comes from academia and actually means the "two-way exchange of knowledge, expertise, and capabilities between higher education institutions (HEIs) and external partners".
Community-level cyber security and resilience is a known issue in the UK
According to the Cyber Security Breaches survey 2024, 50% of UK businesses reported cyber-attacks or security breaches, an increase of 18% on the previous year.
And yet only 31% of small businesses and 26% of charities have the resources or skills to undertake a cyber risk assessment that would highlight gaps in their policies, procedures and operational activities to identify and protect vulnerabilities.
Connecting business knowledge exchange social value into these organisations, would be easy and deliver far-reaching benefits felt out inside the equally at-risk local communities.
A new drive to add this knowledge exchange social value, to the existing support from the National Cyber Resilience Centre Network.
Cybercrime significantly impacts UK communities through widespread financial loss, severe psychological distress, and the disruption of essential local services. In 2025, approximately 43% of UK businesses and 30% of charities reported experiencing a cyber attack in the preceding 12 months. (Source: The House of Commons Library).
The Pluggin Marketplace is now in place to support the development and contractual mobilisation of supplier knowledge exchange social value across England and Wales, and align this strategically with the strategic objectives and activities of the National Cyber Resilience Centre Network (NCRCG).
This is a joined-up approach, maximising social value within public contracting, to tackle the known economic disruption of cybercrime:
- Total Economic Cost: The total annual cost of cybercrime to the UK economy is estimated at £27 billion.
- Small Businesses and Charities: Cybercrime costs the small business community roughly £5.26 billion annually. In 2025, the average cost of the most disruptive breach was £1,600 for businesses and £3,240 for charities.
The National Cyber Resilience Centre Group (NCRCG)
This is a strategic collaboration between the police, government, private sector and academia to help strengthen cyber resilience across the nation’s small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) community and community organisations networks.
NCRCG is a not-for-profit organisation, funded and supported by the Home Office, policing and private sector partners.
NCRCG has a platform to coordinate a strong defence against cyber crime and, by doing so, make the UK a more attractive place to work in and invest in.
