LORCA Live, an online showcase event for LORCA, the UK government-backed cyber innovation platform, is running in the week of September 14 to 18, instead of a physical conference. LORCA is short for London Office for Rapid Cybersecurity Advancement – that’s delivered by Plexal, pictured, on the campus of the 2012 Olympics in east London.
Speakers include Ciaran Martin, NCSC (National Cyber Security Centre) CEO; Sharon Barber, chief security officer, Lloyds Banking Group; William Dixon, head of future networks and technology, at the Swiss think-tank the World Economic Forum (WEF); and Robert Hannigan, LORCA chair of the industry advisory board (IAB).
Topics include; disinformation and becoming better digital citizens; ensuring the growth of early-stage cyber startups; and how Covid-19 is changing the security agenda for CISOs (chief information security officers). Sign up for free at https://www.lorca.co.uk/lorca-live/.
Last month in its 2020 report, which ‘takes the pulse of the UK’s growing cyber ecosystem’, said that British cyber startups had raised £496m in the first half of 2020, and raised £104m in the first two months of lockdown alone. However cyber solutions that draw on deep technology can have long product development cycles, and the market need may not be clear to venture capitalists; hence the need to find ways of supporting the brightest early-stage startups and academic spin-outs.
Cyber startups tend to focus on selling to large corporates, and as a result smaller organisations and charities are less protected online. At the same time, many organisations are struggling to secure remote teams of freelancers who use their own devices – a challenge that Covid-19 has made worse, the report noted. It raised the question of securing the individual PC and IT user – an increasingly important security trend, but who pays; the government, individuals, platforms or some others?
About LORCA
It’s the cybersecurity programme that’s funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport and delivered by Plexal, Deloitte and the Centre for Secure Information Technologies. Visit https://www.lorca.co.uk/.
