About West Gate Consulting
A boutique consultancy built on two decades of enterprise IT, cyber security and Microsoft cloud delivery.
Practitioners, not account managers.
West Gate Consulting was founded on a straightforward premise: organisations deserve senior-level cyber security and cloud expertise without the overhead of large consultancy firms.
Richard Stainforth brings an unusual background to security consulting. He started his career as a British Army Combat Medical Technician, then worked as an NHS paramedic — environments where structured decision-making and composure under pressure are non-negotiable. He spent the following two decades in enterprise IT leadership across financial services, developing deep delivery experience in Microsoft Azure, M365, Entra ID, Sentinel, Defender and Cyber Essentials.
That combination of disciplines shapes how we work. Every engagement starts with a clear scope, carries defined deliverables and ends with measurable outcomes. We don't bill for time spent learning your environment. We don't put juniors on client work. And we document everything we build so your team can operate it independently.
Results we've delivered.
£400k → £179k annually on a live production estate
Progressed from Tier 1 to 2.9 across a financial services organisation
Microsoft Sentinel deployment achieving Silver certification
Authored and published across infrastructure and security tooling
Four principles.
Scope before engagement
We define deliverables and success criteria before a project starts. Scope creep benefits nobody. You always know what you're buying.
Evidence over assertion
Every recommendation is backed by data. Maturity scores, cost analysis, configuration audit findings — we quantify the problem and the fix.
Security enables business
Good security doesn't block operations. It removes barriers — regulatory approval, customer trust, supply-chain access. We frame everything in business terms.
Leave you self-sufficient
Every engagement ends with documentation, runbooks and knowledge transfer. We build capability, not dependency.
Want to work with us?
Get in touch and tell us what you're trying to solve.