It’s time for the June blog from our Head of the Cyber Cluster, Ciara Mitchell, in which she talks about the role of the cluster in engaging with different communities.
One of the key roles of any cluster is to bring the community together in impactful ways and to continuously make connections across the community and with other key communities. ScotlandIS Cyber, Scotland’s cyber cluster are doing this in a number of different ways.
Our Cyber Cluster community and Women in Cyber events bring the cyber communities together to learn, network and to share knowledge.
We are establishing a number of cyber specialisms. In the past month we chaired the launch event for the Cyber Specialism group meeting around Industrial Control Systems and Operational Technology. The group consists of a number of organisations across the cyber sector that specialise in this area, and there was a strong appetite to engage in open discussions around the ICS/OT topic. In addition, we are currently in discussions with organisations within the 5G/IoT sector of cyber, with a view to confirming a date for the second specialism group launch meeting. The third specialism discussions looking at Digital Identity have also started.
As we see the rapid growth of the Space Industry in Scotland we have initiated a project looking at the opportunities for the cyber sector to engage and assist with the secure development of activities within the Space sector and in bringing these communities together to work collaboratively.
Working with organisations like UKC3 (cyber cluster collaboration) and Global EPIC connects the Scottish cyber cluster to other UK clusters and international cyber clusters, and offers an easy route in for cyber companies who also want to connect to these clusters.
We recently set up the Scottish Cluster Ecosystem Alliance (SCEA) which brings together representatives from across the tech sector such as fintech, space, mobility, cyber, data, and many more. The aim of the SCEA is to bring together these representatives to promote collaboration and knowledge exchange between these sectors. There are many great programmes and initiatives being supported and driven by these organisations and the sectors they represent, and the SCEA’s role is to ensure there is visibility across the many activities so that we can have a more joined-up approach, thereby delivering greater impact and outcomes across the tech sector.
There are representatives from 14 different areas/clusters involved in the group across cyber, data, traveltech, fintech, spacetech, 5G, data centres, manufacturing, IOT, photonics, MaaS, digital health, regtech and gaming.
We will continue to explore additional and better ways to connect the cyber community so that we can continue to support and grow the cyber sector in Scotland.
Please feel free to contact david.ferguson@scotlandis.com if you would like to be involved in any of the specialism groups or to discuss our space project. Or contact ciara.mitchell@scotlandis.com in relation to anything else covered above.