Its been a busy and eventful January with my New Years resolutions long forgotten in this busy period.
We had our cluster launch event on the 30th January in Edinburgh so thank you to all those who made it along to that, the feedback has been great with lots of insights from Fintech Scotland, MaaS cluster, and NI Cyber Cluster to name a few. It is an exciting time for cluster development in Scotland and I have found the warm responses and excitement of others a strong affirmation that we are heading in the right direction for the cyber cluster in Scotland – albeit being early on our journey!
Cyber Scotland Week is coming up soon (week of 17th Feb) and this is a great opportunity to showcase the depth and breadth of cyber security in Scotland – I am planning on getting out to numerous events throughout the week so hope to catch up with many of you along the way! I’m also speaking at the Holyrood event on the 18th, Cyber Scotland connect on the 20th and modelling a panel discussion at Cyber Scotland 2020 in Aberdeen on the 20th – will be a busy but fun week! And its not too late to get involved whether attending an existing event or running your own – details can be found here.
The Cyber Directory is now live so please use it, share it and of course check whether you are on it if you are operating in that space. It is the “yellow pages” for cyber – a directory of cyber security companies with a presence in Scotland.
We will be planning a number of events throughout the year so do keep an eye on the ScotlandIS Cyber website – the next one up is an event with FinTech Scotland and the Data Cluster on 3rd March where we are seeking to bring together financial services, cyber and data companies to discuss challenges and innovative solutions across these sectors. There are some other great cyber security events coming up between Securitay at Abertay University at end February, CENSIS IOT secure by design workshops, Napier Blockchain conference and many more.
I have been hitting the streets quite a bit over the last month and wanted to say thanks to all those who took the time to meet with me as it is all really helping me to understand the ecosystem and the challenges being faced by the sector. Big thanks to Barrier Networks for an invite to their security conference, some fascinating insights from the speakers. I have had a chance to visit a few of our great universities. I went in to meet with the David Aspinall and Jean Carletta from Edinburgh Uni cyber team and also met with Jackie Riley, GCU cyber lead and Ascent Cyber who are a start-up based at GCU. Great to know about all the good work going on at these universities and I have been into Abertay and Napier previously so will hopefully visit all the cyber focussed ones eventually!
Hope to see you over Cyber Scotland Week #CyberScotWeek2020