Cyber Essentials Certification

Russell WBHO (formerly Russells Construction, established 1997) is one of the North West's leading construction contractors, with a turnover in excess of £140m and over 200 employees. The company delivers commercial, industrial, healthcare, leisure and residential construction projects across the UK. As the firm expanded its client portfolio — increasingly including NHS organisations, public sector developers and major national brands — Cyber Essentials certification became a contractual requirement for tender submissions.

With 200+ employees across multiple active construction sites, a diverse device estate including site-based laptops, mobile devices and office infrastructure, and growing client pressure to demonstrate cyber security credentials, Russell WBHO needed to achieve Cyber Essentials quickly without disrupting project delivery. The construction sector's distributed workforce and reliance on third-party subcontractors added complexity to the scoping process.

Foresight scoped the certification boundary, conducted a full security assessment across office and site-based infrastructure, and produced a clear remediation plan. We worked directly with Russell WBHO's IT and operations teams to implement the required controls — hardening configurations, tightening user access policies, reviewing firewall rules and ensuring patch compliance — before submitting the application to the certification body and managing the process through to award.