It is hard to believe a month has gone by since my last blog – you would have thought time would go slowly as weekdays blur into weekends but somehow they are going by surprisingly fast. Hopefully by next month’s update we will be starting our phased exit and appreciating the little extra freedom we get along the way.
I am well aware this has been a horrendous ordeal for many businesses and I hope you and your business are coping and will see this storm out. I have spoken to a number of different businesses now and the impact is naturally very varied depending on business models, size and maturity of company, ability to offer services remotely and many other factors of course. Collectively, and despite the ordeal, it has been great to see the cyber community have such a strong response in helping the business community to rapidly move to online tools and remote working and I realise many businesses have offered their services and time for free so a huge thank you for all your efforts!
As per my last article I would like to highlight some opportunities which may be of interest to the cyber cluster:
- We posted a message from Matt Warman, Minister for Digital Infrastructure on our website which can be found here. I won’t repeat it all but wanted to highlight these in particular as closing dates are imminent:
- Early stage incubator programme, HutZero, run by CyLon is recruiting for its sixth cohort. The application deadline is 17 May.
- Cyber101, is running a virtual Business Skills Bootcamp, scheduled for 19 May. You can also register for information on future bootcamps.
- Innovate UK currently have funding opportunities open for projects tackling cyber security IoT challenges (applications by 20 May)
- SPE Aberdeen are calling for abstracts on “Digitalisation of Process Control Delivering More Data with Cyber Security in Mind” – the deadline is June 19th and details can be found here.
- The Scotland 5G Centre in collaboration with ScotlandIS and other partners are planning a series of 5G Security focussed webinars with the first one scheduled for May 28th. They are in the process of confirming speakers for future events so if you are interested in getting involved please get in touch with myself of directly with the Scotland 5G Centre.
I also wanted to let everyone know that as part of the Cyber Cluster work we will be carrying out a cluster benchmarking exercise over the next few months and to enable this we will be sending out a survey to all Scottish based cyber companies. We would love your support in completing this survey. As there are a lot of COVID-19 surveys out currently we will delay sending this out until early June. DCMS are also starting their work on the next UK Cyber Sector report and I am in discussions with them to ensure we work collaboratively. Please do support their work if contacted by them as it would be great to get Scotland’s cyber sector better represented in that report.
We have a webinars which will be hopefully of interest to cyber companies and the wider user community – do keep an eye on our events page. And if running a webinar let us know and we can list it on here too.
I am continuing to have conversations with the cyber cluster despite the lockdown so do get in touch if we haven’t spoken and you would like to understand the aims of the cluster better and how you can get involved. Drop me a line at ciara.mitchell@scotlandis.com.