Cyber security academic startup accelerator programme (CyberASAP) 2023, year 7: phase 1

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) will work with Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, to invest up to £800,000 in innovative cyber security projects coming from an academic research base.

The aim of this competition is to identify the most promising commercial opportunities in academia in respect to cyber security. Your proposal must include the area of your research, the problem that you are solving and your proposed solution.

The Cyber Security Academic Startup Accelerator Programme (CyberASAP) is a 1-year programme. This is phase 1 of a 2-phase competition over the year. Phase 1 will last up to 4 months, split into 2 stages:

• Stage 1: An initial 2 months for value proposition development activities, followed by a presentation to an independent judging panel who will select teams to go to stage 2
• Stage 2: A further 2 months for market validation activities

Phase 1 will determine the value of the idea and, if appropriate, identify the best commercial route to progress. The programme will be supported by industry experts, including some from cyber security.

This competition has two funding strands for entry:

1. Security of Digital Technologies at the Periphery (SDTaP) – commercialisation strand.
2. Open strand.

It is your responsibility to ensure you submit your application to the correct strand for your project. You will not be able to transfer your application and it will not be sent for assessment if it is out of scope.

Eligibility

This award is provided on a No subsidy basis. This means you must publish or make all project outputs openly available on a non-selective basis. If you decide to commercially exploit project outputs, you can only do so with no selective advantage.

This competition offers two funding strands:

You will be asked which funding strand you are applying for:

1. The Security of Digital Technologies at the Periphery (SDTaP) – commercialisation strand is open to eligible researchers from academic institutions that are active consortium members of the Privacy, Ethics, Trust, Reliability, Acceptability and Security (PETRAS). Eligible researchers are those who have been funded from PETRAS as part of a research project. This strand offers commercialisation support for UKRI-funded project-based research results with promising innovation potential and societal impact. Applicable projects extend across the PETRAS current project portfolio as well as the legacy project portfolio of the PETRAS IoT Research Hub.
2. Open strand is open for eligible individuals from academic institutions that are not eligible for the SDTaP – commercialisation strand.

Your project must:

• have total costs for each stage of £16,000 or less (total £32,000 or less)
• start on 9 May 2023
• end on 8 September 2023

To be eligible for funding you must:

• be based in a UK 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, you must:

• be based in a UK academic institution
• be interested in the commercialisation of the 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.

If we award you funding, you must be dedicated to the project for the 2-month value proposition building activity from 9 May 2023. If we decide you can continue to the market validation activity you must be dedicated for the additional 2 months until 8 September 2023.

‘Dedicated to the project’ means you must:

• attend 2 days of in-person events and 3 days of online events as part of the initial 2 month value proposition activity (click here for the list of proposed dates)
• be able and be permitted to work on your project for at least 2 days a week in order to make it a success

Scope

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

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

• information systems, including hardware, software and associated infrastructure
• data on such 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 project must include:

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

Briefing and support

An online briefing was held on Wednesday 29th March: click here for the recording and here for the slides

The Cyber Security Academic Startup Accelerator Programme (CyberASAP) aims to increase the amount of academic research being commercialised within UK universities through a bespoke programme of support. For more details on the programme please go to: www.cyberasap.co.uk or email cyberasap@ktn-uk.org.