Cyber security company · Bristol · UK wide
Fourarmed started with an insurance broker's frustration.
Castlemead had spent years arranging cyber cover for UK businesses and kept seeing the same story play out. A client would buy a policy, tick the boxes they believed mattered, then get hit anyway and lose far more time and money than they needed to. The security advice they had been given beforehand was usually too technical to act on, or too generic to be worth acting on.
So, we built the firm we wished had existed. Fourarmed is a cyber security company, Bristol based and working UK-wide, shaped by what goes wrong in real businesses. We price so you know the cost before you commit, and we report in language your board can act on in an afternoon.
Our office is in Southville, a mile south of Bristol city centre, and we work with organisations across the country.
A fixed-price cyber security audit of your systems, controls, software and people. We visit the site, look at what is actually running, and give you a prioritised action plan plus a board summary.
For most businesses, this is the sensible first step.
Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus certification, from gap analysis through remediation to the assessment itself. Increasingly, this is the price of entry for government work, defence supply chains and larger corporate tenders.
Including the April 2026 scheme changes.
Ongoing network monitoring and phishing tests, plus help scoping and running penetration testing. An audit tells you where you stood in June. Monitoring tells you where you stand today.
Monthly reports you can use at renewal.
Cyber security training that treats your staff as a control, because they are one. Interactive workshops, phishing simulations and scenario exercises, built around your business instead of a generic e-learning module.
Results aggregated. We do not hand over lists of names.
We scope the work, give you a single figure, and that is what you pay. Cyber security has a reputation for open-ended bills and we would rather not add to it.
Most cyber security firms start with an IT-focus. We came from insurance, which changes what we look at.
Underwriters spend their working lives on the wrong end of breaches. They see which controls held, which ones were technically present but practically useless, and which claims fell apart because a business could not provide evidence of what it said it was doing. This knowledge sits behind every audit we run.
A certification indicates a business met a defined standard on a particular day. What an insurer wants to know is whether your business would still be in operation in a fortnight.
These are separate tests, and the gap between them is where most organisations are exposed.
of small businesses identified a cyber breach or attack in the previous 12 months. For medium-sized businesses it is 65%.
Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025/26were hit by phishing, the most common attack type reported by UK businesses by a wide margin.
Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025/26of UK businesses hold Cyber Essentials certification, so it still works as a differentiator as well as a requirement.
Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025/26paid out on UK cyber claims in 2024, up 230% on the previous year. Ransomware and malware accounted for 51%.
Association of British InsurersWe work with organisations that take security seriously but do not have a security department, which describes a large share of UK businesses.
A large share of our work. The government's 2025/26 Cyber Security Breaches Survey found 46% of small businesses and 65% of medium-sized ones had identified a breach or attack in the previous 12 months, while only 5% of UK businesses hold Cyber Essentials certification.
Our roots. We speak both languages, and we know what a broker needs their client to be able to show evidence of at renewal. Our guide to what cyber insurers require covers the details.
Solicitors, accountants and consultancies come to us because they hold client data that is valuable to someone else, usually under a regulator's eye.
Where our sector knowledge is deepest, because Castlemead is a member of ADS Group, the UK trade body for aerospace, defence, security and space. If MOD contracts or a prime such as BAE, Leonardo or Rolls-Royce sits at the top of your supply chain, the cyber security requirements cascade down to you.
These businesses face critical national infrastructure obligations due to operational technology running alongside IT, and their possession of intellectual property worth stealing.
If your customers have started sending you security questionnaires, that is not going to stop. Cyber Essentials Plus usually answers the questions for you.
Fourarmed and Castlemead work as two halves of the same proposition. We assess and improve your security, while Castlemead arranges cover that reflects the improved position.
You can use either without the other, and plenty of clients do. However, handing an underwriter a current audit report from a firm that understands underwriting tends to make renewal conversations go better. There is more on the two businesses and how they fit together in about Fourarmed, and on the method itself in our approach.
Most people who call us have had a prompt of some kind. This may be a client questionnaire they cannot answer confidently, an insurance renewal coming up, or a near miss. Some just want to know where they stand. Either way, we will tell you what we would look at and what it would cost, in writing, before you commit to anything.
