We’ve had an exhilarating three days at the ICC Birmingham where Plexal hosted the Startups Zone at CyberUK 2024, the UK government’s flagship cyber security event from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).
It was a pleasure to witness and facilitate so many compelling conversations between those invested in strengthening our cyber security and resilience. This included familiar faces from our community and newcomers alike, while accommodating leaders of our alumni companies including:
Angoka is an IoT security company focused on protecting machine-to-machine communications for smart cities and mobility, offering solutions that protect devices’ identities.
Cyber Tzar is delivering cyber resilience with its online Cyber Risk Management platform. Providing data-driven insights, it empowers businesses with effective remediation pathways through empirical vulnerability scanning, cyber security profiling and scoring.
Cyntegra enables fast, local and complete recovery from ransomware and cyber attacks, restoring business operations and productivity in hours and minutes instead of days, weeks or months.
ExactTrak provides embedded mobile data and device security across many platforms, enabling devices to autonomously change functionality based on location or customer-generated security profiles.
Goldilock allows customers to remotely and instantly physically connect and disconnect assets (servers, networks, OT systems) to and from the internet – without using the internet.
Lupovis is an AI-based deception solution that engages adversaries who have penetrated a business network through a sequence of decoys using adaptive narrative and manipulation techniques – helping the organisation to carry on as normal.
Memcrypt is taking a new approach to prevent and reduce the impact of ransomware attacks by supporting recovery of encrypted data to remove the need to pay any ransom.
RevEng.AI is building foundational AI models for understanding the contents and behaviour of software supply chains.
Sitehop creates innovative solutions for cyber security and networking, utilising its custom programmable hardware solutions to optimise and accelerate cloud/telco networks.
ThinkCyber helps change people’s behaviour so they can better protect themselves against cyber threats. Its Redflags software applies behavioural science theory to deliver real-time, context-aware, on-device security interventions and nudges at the point of risk.
Aligned with our role as the innovation partner to the NCSC, we were pleased to have Anne Keast-Butler, Director GCHQ, visit us in Hall 4. During her keynote speech, she covered off themes including AI, “pervasive cyber threat” ransomware and countries of concern. The head of GCHQ also detailed: “Our partnerships are our competitive edge. They are longstanding, steadfast, built on liberal values, freedom, and innovation. But we now need to increase our speed in matching problems with technological solutions and for engaging with all of you on tech development and scaling innovation effectively.”
We also caught up with Stephen McPartland MP, who led the McPartland review of cyber security and economic growth in our Startups Zone, as well as delegations from the Gulf and Japan. Cyber researchers across academia, defence and industry were present too, engaging in the discussion to solve challenges linked to future technologies, threats and readiness.
Elsewhere, our CEO Andrew Roughan chaired a panel at the HBD Golden Valley Meetup at the IKON Gallery to discuss the evolution of cyber clusters.
Commenting on the event, Andrew shared: “The subject of innovation clusters is close to my heart and the Plexal mission, so it was exciting to steer the conversation on behalf of our partner HBD and our role in the Golden Valley development, exploring the impact these places can have on economic prosperity. It was encouraging to cover the issue of skills especially, conveying how essential talent is for an ecosystem to thrive while highlighting how the audience can be mindful of risks.”
Fresh from his trip to San Francisco for RSA alongside Cyber Runway alumni, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Department for Business and Trade, our CCO Saj Huq was also present in Birmingham. He first joined a National Cyber Advisory Board meeting and followed this as a panellist with Google’s CyberUK Masterclass entitled Future Threat, Future Ready: What needs to be done today. Centred around AI and the risks associated with the technology, Saj emphasised the need for better collaboration between government, industry and startups, to accelerate the pace of tech development and establish the UK as a true global leader in AI.
Monika Radclyffe, Senior Director of Innovation Programmes, concluded: “CyberUK has been a fantastic way to reinforce the work we’re doing to help power the UK’s cyber ecosystem across programmes and other initiatives with our government and industry partners and a community of innovators. To those of you who couldn’t make it, we’ll be at Infosecurity Europe next month!”
