CyberASAP Year 8 Demo Day: A Year of Cybersecurity Innovation Celebrated

Funded by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and delivered by Innovate UK, the programme works to boost the cyber ecosystem & grow the economy, bringing the government, cyber security academics and the business and investment communities together to accelerate the growth of the sector.

“This is the longest running government initiative in cybersecurity. The objective is to create a pipeline of new products, services and diversity to grow the cybersecurity ecosystem, and to make sure that it’s a more secure and resilient place.” – Agata Samojlowicz, Deputy Challenge Director – Digital Security by Design, UKRI

“Thank you for working with us to protect businesses and citizens up and down the country to strengthen our public services and to unlock economic growth that cyber brings to the UK” – Minister Feryal Clark, Minister for AI and Digital Government (pictured above)

Minister Clark went on to announce funding for CyberASAP Year 9, which has now begun.

She continues:

“We’ll be bringing forward the cybersecurity and resilience bill, which is a big step towards bolstering our defences; it will broaden the scope of regulation to take in essential digital services and critical supply chains.”

This commitment to furthering cybersecurity stems from a growing need to secure an increasingly digital-first social and technological ecosystem. From cybersecurity solutions that address phishing and biometric security threats, to healthcare and renewable energy concerns, this year’s batch of 14 alumni have been hard at work, producing security software in preparation for market realisation.

“The cutting edge of cybersecurity is often happening in our universities and colleges around the UK. Helping universities to commercialise their research is vitally important.” – Jon Kingsbury, Executive Director – Strategic Development, Innovate UK Business Connect (pictured above)

CyberASAP pulls together teams from UK universities who have an idea or solution they would like to develop into fully commercial, market-ready software. The CyberASAP Demo Day is the culmination of a nearly year-long process, equipping these teams with the tools they need to help realise this goal and pitch to investors to do so.

“Seeing the presentations they’ve done today, it was great to see how far they’ve come.” – Yasemin Gunes, Accelerator Lead, Mountside Ventures

“This has been a good opportunity for us because we are looking to really put our research into commercialisation. CyberASAP really helped us through all the processes, the market validation and the creation of the proof of concept.” – Dr Antonino Masaracchia, CEO & Co-Founder, RapidRANDefender (pictured above)

“From the very start to this point, it has been a very fabulous journey for us. CyberASAP has provided us with that platform where we have managed to actually understand how this whole market works, that can help us move forward.” – Mohsin Raza, AIMTI, Associate Professor, University of East Anglia

Find out more

Download the demo day booklet with details of all the teams.

If you would like to be kept informed about the programme, whether as an investor, industrial supporter or academic participant, please register your interest.