Cyber security and data protection consultancy BH Consulting has launched BH Haven, a new service designed to enable Irish SMEs address the growing combination of cyber security, regulatory, data protection, artificial intelligence, and business resilience challenges they face.
BH Haven combines governance expertise with practical technical services and assurance, giving SMEs access to capabilities that larger organisations can typically maintain through dedicated cyber security, privacy, risk, and compliance teams.
The service brings together cyber security governance and technical assurance, data protection and privacy, AI governance, risk management, regulatory readiness, business continuity and resilience, and executive assurance within a single ongoing service.
BH Consulting has designed BH Haven specifically around the needs and resource constraints of SMEs. Its experienced consultants are augmented by a proprietary AI solution that supports appropriate elements of analysis, evidence review, documentation, regulatory mapping, and reporting. Human oversight, professional judgement and accountability remain with BH Consulting’s consultants.
This approach enables BH Consulting to deliver a broader range of specialist expertise more efficiently and cost-effectively than would traditionally be possible for smaller organisations.
The launch comes as research from Munster Technological University (MTU) and Ireland’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) highlights a significant cyber resilience challenge among Irish SMEs.
The SME Cyber Resilience State of the Sector 2025 research identified a critical cyber resilience gap among Irish SMEs and highlighted challenges relating to preparedness, resources, and access to cybersecurity expertise.
At the same time, SMEs are facing increasing expectations from customers, partners, cyber insurers, and regulators. Regulations including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), NIS2 Directive, EU AI Act and EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) are creating additional governance and assurance requirements as businesses become increasingly dependent on data, cloud services, digital supply chains and AI.
Brian Honan, CEO of BH Consulting, said: “SMEs are the backbone of the Irish economy. The Central Statistics Office figures show that businesses employing fewer than 250 people accounted for 99.8% of active enterprises in Ireland in 2023 and employed almost 1.57 million people, 66.9% of everyone employed in the business economy.
“Yet SMEs face many of the same cyber threats, regulatory obligations and technology challenges as much larger organisations. However, what SMEs generally don’t have are the same resources. A large organisation may have a CISO, DPO, risk and compliance teams, and dedicated technical specialists. For an SME, accessing that breadth of governance, technical capability, and experienced guidance can be extremely difficult and expensive.
“BH Haven has been designed to address that gap by giving SMEs practical access to the governance and technical expertise they need in a way that is proportionate to their risks and commercially realistic for their business. As October is the European Cybersecurity Awareness Month we feel that this is the perfect time to launch BH Haven to enable SMEs to ensure they meet their cyber security needs.”
Honan added: “Cyber security, GDPR, AI governance, and cyber resilience are often treated as separate problems, but businesses don’t experience risk that way. A cyber incident can quickly become a data breach, disrupt operations, affect customers, trigger regulatory obligations, and become major business issue.
“By combining the experience of our consultants with our proprietary AI capabilities, we can make a comprehensive level of governance and technical expertise accessible to SMEs without trying to replicate the cost structure of a large enterprise.”
BH Haven will also help SMEs respond to increasing customer and supply-chain assurance demands, including security questionnaires, procurement assessments, and requests for evidence demonstrating how cybersecurity, privacy, resilience, and AI risks are managed.
International expansion and up to 50 new roles
The company expects the development of BH Haven, together with growing demand for its wider services, to support the creation of up to 50 additional roles over the next three years across cyber security, technical assurance, data protection, risk and compliance, AI governance and business resilience.
“The challenges facing Irish SMEs are shared by businesses across Europe,” said Honan. “Our ambition is to establish BH Haven successfully in Ireland and the UK and then expand into the Nordics and other EU markets. We believe this gives us an opportunity to grow an Irish-developed service internationally while creating high-value specialist roles here in Ireland.”
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