Our Story

Western CACE is the world’s first free university embedded Cybersecurity Aid Centre dedicated to training the next generation of Digital Defenders to assist small business with cyber incident response.

We are a not-for-profit association run out of Western Sydney University dedicated to helping small business with cybersecurity support. The centre is led by Professor Alana Maurushat and Robert Beutel at Western Sydney University, working with our founding partners: Secolve, Emergence, Gridware and DCEncompass, and NSW Cybersecurity Innovation Node.

The Centre is indebted to the Australian and NSW Governments along with Western Sydney University for providing the initial funding, infrastructure and equipment, and for their ongoing support. We are grateful for the support of our sponsors who have donated time, effort, expertise, and materials to make CACE a success.

Our Mission

Cybersecurity attacks can be very stressful to an organisation resulting in economic, emotional and physical harm. Our mission is to alleviate this burden for small businesses by providing free cyber response assistance, training and walking you through legal requirements and how to implement security controls. We will empower and assist small businesses with their cybersecurity needs, with a focus on assisting with cyber incident response for ransomware, data breach and business email compromise. Our Goal is Security Activation – moving from awareness, to empowerment, to making changes and implementing security controls in your organisation to help prevent and secure you against future cyber incidences.

Our Vision

The early 1930s witnessed the emergence of free legal aid centres in universities in North America operating within Law schools. These free legal aid centres have gradually been implemented in universities all across the globe and have become the backbone of legal education with students assisting the community with their legal problems. Western CACE is the world’s first free university embedded Cybersecurity Aid Centre dedicated to training the next generation of Digital Defenders to assist small business with cyber incident response.