This competition is open to single applicants and collaborations.

To work alone or lead a collaborative project you must:

• be based in a UK registered academic institution
• have a cyber security idea
• be interested in the commercialisation of your idea
• have the support of your academic institution’s technology transfer office or equivalent
• not act in any way to gain selective commercial or economic advantage from the outputs of this project

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must:

• be a UK registered academic institution
• be interested in the commercialisation of your idea
• have the support of your academic institution’s technology transfer office or equivalent

Each academic institution in the consortium will be funded individually, but the total funding for all academic partners must be no more than £32,000 for each application.

You can submit more than one application if you have multiple ideas, but we will not select more than one for funding.

Your project must:

• have total costs between £2,500 and £16,000 allocated to each phase
• carry out its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
• start on 1 April 2026
• end by 31 July 2026

Note that the first part of phase 1 will take place in April and May, and the second part for selected teams will take place in June and July: see dates below.

You must only include eligible project costs in your application. Eligible costs for this competition are the salaries of the academics participating in the programme and will include travel and subsistence to the CyberASAP Yr 10 phase 1 events only.

The funding is for commercialisation activities and there is no funding available at this phase for:

• project research
• consumables
• Technology Transfer Officer (TTO)
• marketing
• hardware and software
• equipment
• overheads and estate costs

Participants in phase 1 with ideas that demonstrate the most potential for commercialisation will be invited to apply to participate in phase 2, where funding is available to develop a proof of concept for the product or service.

If we award you funding, the project leader must be dedicated to the project for the two month value proposition building activity from 1 April 2026. If we decide the project leader can continue to the market validation activity (the second part of phase 1) they must be dedicated for the additional two months until 31 July 2026.

“Dedicated to the project” means the project leader must:

• attend two days of in person events and three days of online events as part of the initial value proposition activity
• be able and permitted to work on your project for at least two days a week in order to make it a success

You will be contacted by Innovate UK Business Connect with full details of events relevant to you, including confirmed dates.

Before the formal start of the programme an informal online introduction session is provisionally planned for Wednesday 8th April. Innovate UK Business Connect will advise all participants of the time in due course.

The planned dates for the value proposition phase (the first part of phase 1) are:

• 15 and 16 April 2026: in person value proposition bootcamp
• 17 April 2026 from 11:30 am to 12:30pm: webinar for Technology Transfer Officers or equivalent
• 6 and 7 May 2026: online value proposition mid-stage review
• 28 and 29 May 2026: online value proposition pitch to selection panel, teams must pitch at a slot on one of these two days

Innovate UK Business Connect will hold regular informal online drop in sessions during the value proposition stage. Project teams will be informed of the schedule when the programme commences.

If selected to undertake the additional market validation phase (the second part of phase 1) you must commit to attend three days of in person events and three days of online events. The planned dates are:

• 2 to 4 June 2026: attend InfoSec at ExCel London: optional
• 9 and 10 June 2026: in person market validation bootcamp
• 11 June 2026: in person meet the mentor day
• 30 June 2026: online market validation mid-stage review
• 1 July 2026: online meet the entrepreneur day
• 22 and 23 July 2026: online market validation pitch to selection panel, teams must pitch at a slot on one of two days.

The aim of this competition is to identify the most promising commercial opportunities in academia relating to cyber security.

We define cyber security to mean protecting any or all the following from unauthorised access, harm or misuse:

• information systems including hardware, software and associated infrastructure
• data on information systems
• services provided by information systems

This includes harm caused intentionally by the operator of the system, or accidentally, as a result of failing to follow security procedures.

Your proposal must include:

• the area of your research
• the problem you are solving
• your proposed solution
• your initial market validation plan

We encourage applications that respond to the below cyber security challenges:

• Security and Resilience of Operational Technology (OT)
• Software Supply Chain Security and Resilience, including compliance with Software Code of Practice and security of cloud services
• Emerging Opportunities and Technologies: this can include AI in cyber security (access management, change management, threat detection and reporting), drones and robotics.

This list is not exhaustive and we welcome applications that address other cyber security challenges, including online harms.

We are not funding projects:

• that are not related to cyber security
• from academic institutions outside the UK
• that have an academic lead that has already led and completed a previous CyberASAP project

An online briefing will be held at 10.30am on Tuesday 20 January: click here to register for a place. A recording and slides will be available afterwards.

For more details on the programme please go to: www.cyberasap.co.uk or email cyberasap@iukbc.org.uk .