Ciara Mitchell, Head of the Cyber Cluster, has written her monthly blog around how the cluster helps drive innovation across Scotland.
One of the aims of any cluster is to support and drive growth of that sector with a particular focus on promoting innovation to meet the future challenges and needs of the market.
Within ScotlandIS Cyber we use a number of routes to focus on this area such as running market insights and meet-the-buyer events, connecting the cluster with other key sectors in Scotland, and signposting and highlighting the different innovation opportunities whether it be applications for accelerators or open innovation calls. More information on these initiatives can be found here.
With in-person events now back we are keen to start to run events at a number of key locations across Scotland and it would be great to hear from folk who would like to be involved with hosting a cyber cluster event – we are really keen to do this in partnership with the cyber community!
Our big news for this month is a recent addition to the ScotlandIS Cyber team with Eamonn Keane joining us to support the focus on cyber innovation and growth. Eamonn, who many of you already know, brings with him a vast knowledge of cyber security and a well-established connection with the cyber community. For those of you who may not have met Eamonn, his previous roles were as Head of Innovation in SBRC and before that he spent many years in the cyber crime team in Police Scotland. His full bio can be found here.
Eamonn will be acting as cyber cluster integrator with a particular focus on cyber innovation working primarily (but not exclusively) with the cyber start-ups. Eamonn is really keen to get in touch with many of you so do please reach out to Eamonn to set up a session with him eamonn.keane@scotlandis.com.
The aim of the start-up focus is to better understand who our start-ups are, what products and services they are offering (and in some cases developing) and what challenges they face. This helps the cluster in many ways as we can start to showcase the innovation talent in Scotland and we can ensure our events and activities are more focussed around delivering the needs of the cyber cluster.
This also compliments the work of the cyber innovation hub that Plexal are leading. Plexal have already started to consult with a number of key Scottish cyber ecosystem organisations, including academia, and will continue to set up further sessions over the next few weeks and months. The cyber community has an opportunity to steer the direction and aim of the cyber innovation hub so if you would like to get engaged in the consultations or even to find out more, please do get in touch.
And lastly thanks to everyone who tuned in to ScotSoft last week. There were a number of talks on cyber security from across the Scottish, UK and International cyber community. We had a great attendance and thankfully the platform all ran smoothly – looking forward to it being back in person next year. It was also great to catch up with many of you at the ScotSoft dinner which included the Young Software Engineer Awards – it was amazing to hear about the many innovative projects being run in our great universities across the country. Congratulations to all the winners!