A Cardiff IT company has spent the summer driving a vintage ice cream van around South Wales, handing out free scoops to office workers and using the queue as an opportunity to talk about phishing.
Quicksmart IT’s Cyber Scoops van has already visited businesses across the region, and the company is now taking nominations for its next outing on Friday 4 September.
The premise is deliberately low-key. There is no presentation, no sales pitch and no obligation. Staff get an ice cream, and anyone who wants to ask about password managers, dodgy invoices or whether that email from the finance director was real can do so while they eat it.
Behind the novelty sits a serious gap. The UK Government’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025/2026, published on 30 April, found that 43% of UK businesses identified a cyber breach or attack in the previous twelve months, equivalent to around 612,000 organisations.
Phishing accounted for the overwhelming majority. It was experienced by 38% of businesses and named as the most disruptive form of attack by 69% of those affected. Among businesses that were breached, more than half experienced phishing and nothing else.
Yet only 19% of businesses ran any staff training or awareness activity during the year, a figure that has not shifted. Around four in ten have no agreed process at all for staff to follow when they spot a suspicious email, and just a quarter have a formal incident response plan.
The pattern is more pronounced among smaller firms. Micro businesses reported breach rates of 42% and small businesses 46%, against 65% for medium-sized firms and 69% for large ones, but smaller companies are far less likely to have training, monitoring or a plan in place.
Adrian Radford at Quicksmart IT said the van came out of frustration with how the subject is usually handled.
“Cyber security gets talked about in a way that makes people switch off,” they said. “It’s either terrifying or it’s jargon, and the result is the same. Nobody does anything. We found that if you turn up with a 99 and ask someone what they’d do if they got an invoice from a supplier with different bank details on it, you get a proper conversation.”
“The survey says four in ten businesses have no process for reporting a suspicious email. That isn’t a technology problem. Nobody needs a firewall to fix it. Somebody just has to tell staff who to forward it to.”
The company is now getting ready for its next Cyber Scoops day on Friday 4 September, and is asking businesses to help decide where the van goes.
Nominations are open to any business in South Wales. Firms can put themselves forward or nominate a neighbour, and Quicksmart is particularly keen to hear from shared buildings and business parks where the van can reach several companies in one visit. Teams that have simply had a hard few months are also fair game.
The best suggestions will get a visit, with free ice cream for the team and neighbouring businesses, plus practical cyber security advice and, the company stresses, no hard sell.
Nominations can be submitted through the Quicksmart IT website, and the winner will be contacted by email before the end of August.
One restriction applies. The van is vintage, and it does not cross the Severn Bridge.
Quicksmart IT is based at Titan House in Cardiff and provides IT support and cyber security services to businesses across South Wales.
