CyberNorth has joined forces with North West Cyber Security Cluster and Yorkshire Cyber Security Cluster in collaboration with UKC3 to tackle the lack of investment and development in the cybersecurity landscape across the North.
Together the cluster is on a clear mission to facilitate and level up the divide across the North through the Northern Cyber Clusters Collaboration project, which aims to better understand cybersecurity assets and key cybersecurity players in the Northern regions, and to develop ways for them to work together to increase visibility and to elevate growth and opportunities in the sector.
Through the collaboration they are seeking to understand what can be done to create strong ties, develop relationships and nurture collaboration that will see individuals, organisations, communities, sectors and the economy throughout the North of England benefit. Through a digital survey and a series of events in Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Newcastle upon Tyne and Durham the team will gather insight in a move to facilitate a stronger force on the ground in the North.
A series of listening session round table events are running throughout the region, and anyone involved or interested in the cyber security sector is welcome to register and attend.
Cybersecurity is a necessity across every business and the high-growth sector is on an upward trajectory with annual cyber security revenue in the UK now estimated at a huge £10.1 billion, an increase of 14% in the last year alone. However, when it comes to the North/South divide the statistics are a cybercrime in themselves with recent statistics citing cybersecurity investment in the southern regions accumulated to £982.4 million. Falling very short were the Northern regions with just £8 million investment.
The cybersecurity threat and landscape is always evolving, and attacks are becoming more prevalent and sophisticated, with data breaches and hacks affecting everything from retail to healthcare to finance. Recent research cited that cyberattacks on UK organisations surged by 77% in 2002, with the UK education sector alone seeing a 257% increase in attacks compared with 2021.
There are about 1,800 firms within the UK providing cybersecurity products and services, and 52,700 people employed full-time in cyber security related roles. Unfortunately, though the statistics expose that the sector is not growing at the same rate across the country, with the North severely underrepresented.
Phil Jackman, director at CyberNorth said: “We are delighted to join forces with our Northern cluster counterparts to work more closely and to implement a focussed and proactive approach to collaboration. The statistics speak for themselves, and it is of paramount importance that we take action to level up the cyber security sectors across the three regions.”
Through the survey and the regional events, the Northern Cyber Clusters’ Collaboration project aims to gather key contributions from cybersecurity organisations, communities and professionals to find out what they want out of the cluster collaboration across the North of England, and how they see the clusters progressing in the future.
Key players in Northern regions include Waterstons (one of only 21 organisations to receive Certified Cyber Consultancy status from the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), Accenture and Sapphire, which shows the capacity and opportunity to further develop and increase visibility of the sector in the North.
The UK Cyber Cluster Collaboration exists to support cyber clusters in their mission to drive economic growth in the sector. This is done through funding and by enabling opportunities for networking, knowledge exchange, sharing of best practice, and identification of opportunities for regional and ultimately national growth. As a national body, the UKC3 works across public, private sectors, and academia and provides a single entity for organisations wishing to engage with the UK Cyber Cluster community.
Linda Smith, UKC3 chairman of UK Cyber Cluster Collaboration, said: “We welcome this collaborative and focussed initiative to tackle and redirect more resources to underrepresented regions. Findings from the UK Cyber Security Sectoral Analysis 2022 have highlighted the strong discrepancies in the Northern regions which we need to work together to address.
