UK cyber security firm joins new scale-up centre
Innovate UK-supported Think Cyber Security is one of the first 10 to benefit from the government's £13.5 million dedicated centre for industry-led innovation.
Think Cyber Security will benefit from industry-leading expertise to accelerate its development.
The start-up company is part of the first cohort of UK-based cyber security businesses to join the London Office for Rapid Cybersecurity Advancement (LORCA).
The centre’s mission is to support cyber security innovators to scale and develop their solutions to meet challenges facing the industry.
In joining LORCA, Think Cyber Security will benefit through working alongside organisations, investors, academics and the international cyber security community. It will get access to industry-leading expertise to help accelerate its development.
LORCA opened in June 2018. The centre is run by Plexal in partnership with Deloitte’s cyber team and the Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) at Queen’s University Belfast. It is based at the Here East campus on the former Olympic Park site in Stratford, London.
Think Cyber Security CEO Tim Ward said:
We will be basing ourselves at the site as many days a week as we can. It’s a great facility for hosting meetings, collaborating with fellow start-ups and with onsite services – for example design, insurance, legal and banking.
We have time scheduled to work with Deloitte and CSIT and hope to have opportunities to run trials of our software with these partners and their customers facing cyber security challenges. We are also expecting to be involved in an international mission of some kind to drive exports.
Meeting industry challenges
Think Cyber Security hopes to transform and improve security awareness with users. At the centre it will work alongside other businesses in the industry to address a number of challenges in cyber security.
These are based around:
- automation, which includes deep learning, security analytics and cloud security
- regulation, which includes the impact of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
- orchestration, which focuses on the development of a single solution to collate, aggregate, analyse and interrogate network data
Tim continued:
Organisations have been chosen that cover a fairly wide spread of cyber security areas and complement each other to address different challenges different businesses may be facing.
We are also at a stage where we can gain a lot from the programme to scale up our activities, through working with Deloitte and Lloyds Banking Group and through engineering support from CSIT.
A new cohort of cyber security businesses will arrive at LORCA every 6 months.
By 2021, LORCA plans to have worked with 72 high-potential companies, generated up to 2,000 jobs and secured £40 million in investment.
Using behavioural science to tackle cyber security
Think Cyber Security’s Redflags™ product aims to change the way a company lessens its cyber security risk by using its people as a line of defence.
It does this by using technology and human methods, employing behavioural science to make sure people receive guidance at the right time based on the context of what they are doing. The resulting actions are tracked and measured so the organisation has a better understanding of security awareness.
The business has received Innovate UK funding for a feasibility study to help develop its product.
Tim added:
This is fantastic recognition of the innovation in our approach to security awareness and in our Redflags™ product. It highlights that the market is crying out for something new.
Find out more about Innovate UK’s open programme and funding for disruptive innovation.