Howdens

Howdens is a FTSE 100 company and the UK and Ireland's largest trade-only kitchen supplier. Founded in 1995, it operates over 850 depot locations across the UK and Europe, including France and Belgium, alongside five manufacturing sites producing millions of kitchen cabinets annually. The company employs more than 11,000 staff and reported annual revenue exceeding £2.4 billion. Its model is strictly trade-only - supplying fitted kitchens, joinery, hardware, appliances, flooring, and bathroom cabinetry exclusively to professional tradespeople.

From a security perspective, the attack surface is substantial: a large, distributed retail and manufacturing operation with a significant e-commerce and logistics platform, hundreds of physical depot endpoints, and a supply chain that connects manufacturing sites to trade customers. The threat model spans payment fraud, supply chain integrity, and the protection of customer and commercial data across a complex, multi-country IT environment. Securing the operational technology in manufacturing alongside corporate and retail systems presents a distinct operational challenge.

The cybersecurity team operates in an environment where the business is asset-heavy and digitally integrated - managing the security of systems that handle everything from depot inventory and order processing to planning tools used by tradespeople. The scale and physical distribution of the business mean that network security, identity management, and endpoint protection across a large, mobile workforce are concrete, ongoing operational priorities rather than abstract concerns.