LORCA, the London-based, UK government-backed cyber-security innovation scheme, has once again hosted their popular event, LORCA Live. LORCA Live held a week long virtual cybersecurity conference which took place from 14-18th September 2020. Participants will be debating and finding solutions to the challenges and big security issues of our day, from battling the disinformation spread and supporting early-stage cybersecurity startups that are making the sector more diverse.
The conference included a live panel debate with leaders from our sector with a range of written and spoken content on what’s happening on the frontline of cyber innovation from LORCA’s startup and scaleup members. As part of their discussion Salt Communications’ CEO and Co-Founder Joe Boyle participated in a workshop on the topic of ‘bridging the gap: helping corporates and SMEs overcome the challenges of winning government contracts’, with Dave Rowley, Commercial Director of Cyber at Plexal, and expert guests: Mark Roberts, Capita Consulting; Adrian Holt, Capita Consulting; Chris Porter, 6point6 and our CEO, Joe Boyle, Salt Communications.
This workshop brought together one of the largest outsourcing providers to government; a technology consultancy with strong expertise in digital transformation, emerging technology and cyber security, with the UK government being its largest client; and a leading cybersecurity scale-up that provides Secure Communications, Incident Response and Team Management, to Government and enterprise clients across the globe. The panel explored the main challenges from these different perspectives and identified how collectively the ecosystem can come together to overcome them.
“We work with a number of large Government clients across the globe and there are always challenges like with most things when it comes to winning Government contracts. Governments are much more thoughtful about what they put their money into and they are just right, to ensure it is the best fit for them. We try to educate Governments on the importance of protecting the communication as mobile communications presents major privacy challenges within Government bodies.” said Joe Boyle, CEO at Salt Communications.
With the increase in reported hacking activities government officials have to ensure that they protect their communications from mobile interception and cyber attacks. Salt Communications’ platform enables Government bodies to have secure voice, messaging and conference calling for busy users who need to make critical decisions on the go.
A key topic within the workshop was the benefit of partners positioning emerging products in front of the officials in need of a particular solution. Working directly with different partners around the globe comes with many benefits such as developing working relationships with potential customers who could benefit from emerging products or solutions.
The four themes over the week of LORCA Live were: the new risk landscape caused by the global health pandemic, growing of the UK cyber ecosystem, emerging security challenges faced by industry and the future of skills and employment for the cybersecurity sector.
The event saw 60 contributors and industry leaders took part, including from academia – Oxford Internet Institute, University of Cambridge, Queen’s University Belfast; law enforcement – GCHQ, MI5, and the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC); cyber scale-ups – Darktrace and Digital Shadows; cyber-security corporates – BAE Systems, IBM, BlueVoyant; investors – Accel, Beringea, Paladin Capital and the government.
Over the past two years, the 72 cohort companies supported by LORCA also featured in video demos of their services and solutions, and participated in digital networking during the week. LORCA reported that, only two years after it was founded, cohort companies had raised more than £150m of growth capital. LORCA cohort fundraising accounts for 69pc of all cyber investments received in the United Kingdom after the nation went into lockdown.https://www.youtube.com/embed/t6683Eqg-m0?enablejsapi=1&origin=https://saltdna.com
If you have any questions about this article or you are a part of an official organisation who would like to trial the system, please contact us on info@saltcommunications.com and we’d be happy to assist you in any way.
About LORCA
Delivered by Plexal, the and workspace set up by Delancey, alongside Deloitte and CSIT at Stratford in east London, LORCA (London Office for Rapid Cybersecurity Advancement) is the DCMS-backed cybersecurity innovation programme that is aiming to support cyber innovation for industry and society.
About Salt Communications
Salt Communications is a multi-award winning cyber security company providing a fully enterprise-managed software solution giving absolute privacy in mobile communications. It is easy to deploy and uses multi-layered encryption techniques to meet the highest of security standards. Salt Communications offers ‘Peace of Mind’ for Organisations who value their privacy, by giving them complete control and secure communications, to protect their trusted relationships and stay safe. Salt Communications is headquartered in Belfast, N. Ireland, for more information visit our website.
