The announcement, made at the Malvern Festival of Innovation’s Cyber Security & Big Data Symposium, heralds an innovative new approach to capability sourcing which will enable cyber security SMEs to collaborate more closely and enable potential project partners and customers to quickly identify and engage with specialist cyber security expertise within the UK’s thriving cyber community.
In 2014 Vince Cable, then Secretary of State for Business Innovation & Skills, highlighted the need, saying “SMEs are responsible for developing a lot of intellectual property on cyber defence, but many face the challenge of integrating into the supply chains of bigger organisations”.
Dr Emma Philpott, Managing Director of the social enterprise behind the portal explains, “The Forum is tackling this challenge head-on by providing a platform for businessto-business collaboration”. Dr Philpott goes on to say “The pace of innovation by hackers and cyber criminals is extremely fast. Large companies are often too bureaucratic to allow such innovation so organisations in need are far better off engaging directly with the agile, flexible SMEs in cyber security if they are to stand a chance of keeping pace. This portal simplifies that engagement.”
The new platform is a collaboration portal called CyberCollaborate™ which is designed to revolutionise the way that cyber security capability is contracted. The UKCSF members will register their company details and cyber security capability and will be able to specify which organisations can see their profile. The platform will also allow companies to form Virtual Clusters to chat, share information and collaborate on projects or topics of interest. The platform, built in partnership with Pervade Software, is now entering its beta testing phase with a selection of members from the Forum before being rolled out more widely to the international cyber security community.
