The Challenge
Intercity wanted to scale its vCISO practice but struggled with highly manual risk discovery processes that limited growth.
The Solution
Cynomi provided a repeatable framework that standardized security assessments, compliance benchmarking, and risk management operations.
The Impact
Intercity transformed its advisory services into a scalable, high-margin practice that accelerates sales and strengthens client trust.
Watch the
Intercity story
Phil Bindley · Field Chief Information Security Officer, Intercity · 2 min
As a result of partnering with Cynomi, not only can we grow the business, but we can also identify other opportunities to bring in other revenues to the business around the other services we offer.
Hi, my name is Phil Bindley. I’m the Field Chief Information Security Officer at Intercity. Intercity is a managed service provider and a managed security service provider headquartered in Birmingham in the UK.
The process of going in, auditing, understanding, writing reports, providing high-level dashboards — that could take five to six days of time. With the Cynomi platform, within a day I’ve got that data, and at a much better level in terms of the richness of that data and the clarity and the quantifiable value of that data. So it’s literally saved us four or five days at that initial phase. And then on an ongoing basis, it’s much easier to track. It’s much easier to understand what we’re going to do next week, next month, and next quarter. So it just speeds and expedites that whole process.
For example, I was working with a legal firm at the back end of last year, and one of the things that they needed to do was to get Cyber Essentials certification, as they did a lot of what we call legal aid casework. I started to go through my demo process, and within about 15 minutes they said, “Stop — I want it now.” That doesn’t really happen very often in a sales process, but they could instantly see, through that demonstration that I gave them, the value that this was going to bring to them.
Partnering with Cynomi was the right decision for the vCISO team here at Intercity. It’s given us the tool that we needed to be able to do our job more effectively, more efficiently, more cost-effectively for our customers.
Getting cybersecurity right in an organization actually makes those businesses better. And at Intercity, that’s our mission — to help our customers to be as successful as they possibly can.
What Our Team Loves About Cynomi
The Full Story
Building a Scalable Advisory Model
Intercity is a managed service provider offering a full suite of IT and security services to organizations across the UK. As its vCISO practice grew, the company aimed to provide comprehensive security leadership to businesses facing complex regulatory and supply chain pressures.
The Bottleneck of Manual Discovery
However, evaluating a new client’s security posture was highly manual. The initial phase of auditing, mapping compliance gaps, and building risk management frameworks took five to six days per client. This time-intensive process drove up costs, making it difficult to scale the service or offer it affordably to small and medium-sized enterprises. The team needed a more efficient way to gather data and present it clearly to non-technical business leaders.
Standardizing with Cynomi
Intercity integrated Cynomi’s Security Growth Platform to automate and standardize its security operations. The platform provided a repeatable framework to assess risks first — with benchmarking against standards like Cyber Essentials, GDPR, and ISO 27001 following as the outcome of a stronger security posture. Consultants could now quickly unearth critical data and translate it into clear, quantifiable value for executive boards.
Accelerating Growth and Revenue
Cynomi completely transformed how Intercity delivers and scales its security services. The team now completes initial assessments four to five days faster, drastically lowering the cost of entry for new clients. The clear visual dashboards also accelerate the sales cycle, with one client committing to the service after just a 15-minute demonstration.
Furthermore, the platform’s ability to pinpoint security gaps enables Intercity to cross-sell additional offerings, such as its security operations center services. By reducing delivery times and standardizing outputs, Intercity successfully improved its margins and scaled its vCISO practice without increasing headcount.
The Full Story
Intercity is a managed service provider and managed security service provider offering a full suite of IT, mobile, connectivity, and cybersecurity services to organizations of all sizes.
- Industry: Managed Security Services
- Focus: IT and Cybersecurity Services
- Headquarters: Birmingham, UK
Why Intercity chose Cynomi
Intercity’s problem was advisory delivery that couldn’t scale. Every new client meant five to six days of manual auditing, gap-mapping, and report-building before a consultant could speak to a board. Cynomi standardized that methodology — every consultant now produces the same executive-grade risk narrative, and discovery that took a week happens in about a day. That’s what let Intercity take vCISO services down-market to small and medium-sized enterprises, and grow the practice without adding senior headcount.
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