Governments Wake-up To Need To Build Cybersecurity Companies

Governments Wake-up To Need To Build Cybersecurity Companies

I gave a presentation in Glasgow recently on Innovation, and stressed the need for us to build strong and innovative Cybersecurity companies [here]. It has been a massive challenge over the years, where, unfortunately, there has been a feeling that Cybersecurity was a cross-cutting area, and that you couldn’t build companies that focused on it.

And so, yesterday, we start to see some of the barriers crumbling:

Governments of the world need to understand that the days of manufacturing are numbered, and we are now into a cyber-physical era. Increasingly it is software services and products that provide as much economic benefit as our traditional industries. In Israel, for example, cybersecurity accounts for an export market of over $6 billion, and it is growing fast. In a time of GDPR and NIS, there is thus an increasing need for innovation, especially to move our existing untrusted data world to something that actually embeds ownership, consent and trust.

Yesterday, in my talk, I contrasted London with Scotland in areas of high innovation. For Blockchain/DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology), there are around 216 companies in London who are focusing on the area, but only around six in Scotland. With London having only twice the population of Scotland, we can see that perhaps innovation is well supported in London.

The setup of CyLon (the London innovation centre around Cyber Security), too, shows that London is ahead of many other cities in the world when it comes to building the companies of the future.

For me, I hope the funds are just the start, and hope that the Scottish Government can spark a radical upgrade of public services in Scotland, and put innovation at its core. Otherwise we might be throwing out money, in the hope that something sticks. I hope, too, that we can take more risks in innovation, and not be risk adverse. I have seen too many examples of a risk adverse culture in innovation. We need to create the high impact companies of the future, and ones which truly challenge existing thinking.

I hope the money in Scotland goes to driving real innovation, and bringing academia and SMEs together. It should be ambitious, and aim to build companies of scale, and which can disrupt existing thinking. A forward looking public sector which transforms every single area, especially in health care, government procurement, and digital government, could help drive this innovation. So giving out money is one thing, but governments, themselves, need to change to be properly digital. Few people actually thing that it is large companies that drive innovation, as seen from the survey I did yesterday (please excuse the small typo in the title):

The vast majority of people at the conference who voted thought that the next great company in Cybersecurity will come from university spin-outs and start-ups, and very few from large companies. We thus need a public sector that embarrasses changes, and engages directly with universities and start-ups.

For me, we need to — as defined by Prof Linda Hill — create more social architectures, and who are people that build groups and communities around people who want to innovate:

And so, if you want to see how to build an amazing cybersecurity company, come along on 15 January 2019 and here from the best around:

The phrase ‘inspirational’ trips of the tongue so easily these days, but in the case of Dr Jamie Graves it cannot be used enough. He truly took a PhD idea to a high growth company, and oversaw it at every step of its journey.

We will be releasing information on innovation funding through SICSA NEXUS and how SMEs and academia can work together in building the next great cybersecurity company.

Conclusions

You won’t believe some of the resistance that we have faced in pushing forward on innovation and cybersecurity. Perhaps, one day, I’ll outline some of these things. But, for now, we are lucky enough to have a continual stream of investment agencies knocking on our door, and looking for the next great cybersecurity company.

So, come and hear from Jamie and Federico, and you might lead the next great cybersecurity company.