Head of Cyber, Ciara, updates us on the new figures representing the makeup of the cyber community in Scotland, as well as upcoming events and opportunities in this space.
As part of my role, I have the privilege of gathering intel on the cyber community in Scotland which although a painstaking job at times it does give great satisfaction to see the numbers continuously increase year on year. This time around we have seen a huge jump in tracked cyber security companies which has come partly from meeting new companies during recent in-person events such as Cyber Runway and ScotSecure, and also supported by Scotland-specific data being provided by the authors of the DCMS UK Cyber sectoral report.
As a result, we have seen the number of cyber security companies which operate in Scotland rise 27% from 260 to 330 since our last published stats in October 2021. Out of these 330, around 150 are Scottish-founded or Scotland-headquartered organisations and it has been great to meet newcomers to the community over the last few months such as Blackwired, TrueDeploy and Blue Matrix Security, to name a few.
The number of Scottish start-ups, which I have loosely defined as those being set up within the last 7 to 8 years, is around 70. And across all the Scottish companies there are approximately 60 of those who are building tech products and companies i.e. are cyber “tech” companies.
The fact that the size of the community has risen from 180 since I first took up my post in late 2019 to now 330 is staggering. Some of this is down to simply having better intel but a lot of it has come from new start-ups, companies expanding into Scotland or existing organisations pivoting into cyber security. Whatever their route into the Scottish cyber community all are very welcome – it is great to see the sector grow so much which also helps to retain and attract cyber talent at all levels.
On the innovation side, Edinburgh Napier are still working their magic with Memcrypt, True Deploy and Lasting Asset all developing innovative solutions and I look forward to attending their event on May 31st. Congratulations to BlackWired being selected by DCMS as one of the UK’s most innovative SME and they will be part of DCMS’ innovation pavilion at InfoSec.
There are a number of exciting programmes and events coming for the innovative and growth-focussed companies – Cyber Runway will be opening for registration soon for their online Grow and Scales programmes, you can register interest in the meantime. We are also expecting to run an in-person Cyber Runway Scotland event later this year, in partnership with the UK Cyber Runway programme. And we are also in planning mode for a Cyber Showcase event which will be an application-based pitching programme culminating in a pitching day for those selected.
Watch this space for more details on all of the above coming soon!