Last month the Digital Secretary, Matt Hancock, officially opened the government-funded London Office for Rapid Cybersecurity Advancement (LORCA).
The new centre is dedicated to innovation in terms of cyber-security. Located on the fast-growing ‘Here East’ digital and creative campus, the centre was developed by Deloitte’s cyber team and the Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) at Queen’s University Belfast.
Commenting on the launch of the centre, it’s Director, Lydia Ragoonanan, said: “The threats posed to businesses by cyber-attacks are continually changing. We’ll be working with industry to understand their needs, with investors who can help develop the solutions scale at pace, and with innovators who are helping secure UK’s position as a world leader in cyber security.” She continued, “By bringing all these things together in our new centre we will stay ahead and help British businesses grow and succeed.”
The centre’s opening coincided with the release of research commissioned by LORCA that revealed that more than half of large businesses in the UK have suffered a cyber-security attack in the last 12 months, and that almost a quarter of UK businesses (24%) don’t think their cyber security solutions are fit for their needs.
The study found that more than half (53%) of the companies questioned don’t have a formalised protocol in place for cyber-attacks.
Despite their awareness of this growing threat to their businesses, over 70 percent of companies said they’d avoided purchasing a cyber-security solution from a start-up company or SME in the last two years.
This was attributed to lack of awareness of the solution as well as integration concerns, both were raised as significant barriers.
LORCA has been established to help cyber security companies, based in the UK and at all stages of growth, address business challenges and achieve greater impact with their solutions.
At its launch LORCA announced ten organisations that will make up its first cohort, including B-Secur which specialises in using biometrics and Zonefox.
Dr. Jamie Graves, CEO & Founder of ZoneFox, said, “The UK has so much cyber talent and the mission of LORCA is to get that recognised on a global scale and help innovative start-ups grow their businesses. The support and networking that it will give start-ups, such as ourselves, will be a potential force multiplier for our business.
“In particular, we’re looking forward to working and networking with other international cyber clusters and expanding our London footprint to accelerate the significant growth we have achieved over the last 18 months.”
Commenting on the research published by LORCA, Dr Graves made the point that SMEs and enterprises do not face the same challenges.
“When it comes to security there is no one-size-fits-all solution. SMEs don’t have the resources or internal expertise to know how to best defend themselves against cyber-attacks; they need a partner. And for larger companies, they need to see that the days of being ‘locked in’ to one solution are long gone.
“Today’s tech platforms are all about interoperability. They have to be. Cyber estates are complex enough; transparency and actionable insight is the name of the game.”
Among the other organisations making up the first cohort are: Ioetec, Think Cyber Security, Trust Elevate, Aves Netsec – which has developed a ‘Deception Solution’ that enables network-wide deployment of deception tactics for real-time detection and attacker intelligence harvesting, Cybershield, Cyberlytic – which uses AI to detect and prioritise web threats, CyberOwl and Surevine.