CyberNorth this month led a collaborative charge of North East based cyber security businesses to Cheltenham, the home of the UK’s intelligence, security and cyber agency GCHQ, as part of its first UK-based Trade Mission.
With the support of CyNam, an entity dedicated to facilitating the growth of Cheltenham and Gloucestershire’s cyber technology industry, the visit to Cheltenham provided an opportunity for North East cyber security businesses including Net Defence, CyberWhite Limited, HTG – Howell Technology Group, Cystel, Punk Security, Hicomply Limited, University of Sunderland and Waterstons to showcase their innovation, talent and drive to the South West region and vice versa.
Regarded as ‘the cradle of UK cyber innovation,’ CyNam played host to CyberNorth and the North East delegates which included insights from GCHQ, a deep-dive into the Gloucestershire tech ecosystem, Hub8, Minster Exchange and Golden Valley, alongside industry meetings and networking, with the mission concluding at CyNam’s Headline event 24.2, which was delivered in partnership with the Cheltenham Science Festival.
Danielle Phillips, director and cluster lead at CyberNorth, said: “The visit to Cheltenham really was a key moment for CyberNorth in forging forward with our strategy to facilitate and foster an environment of collaboration and connections amongst our membership community.
The Trade Mission proved to be a great opportunity to fuel cluster collaboration and open dialogue across the cyber community on a national level. Cyber threats continue to evolve and accelerate at high speed, and collectively we can learn from and collaborate together to help shape the landscape.
We are delighted with the feedback we’ve had and to see the connections and appetite for collaborations form first hand was just fantastic and cemented how important the visit was. Collaboration is key and we look forward to facilitating future Trade Missions in the UK and internationally.”
Since inception, CyberNorth has developed the cyber security community and raised local, national and international awareness of opportunities and capacity in the North East. The CyberNorth Membership community is made up of around 1,000 members from the cyber security landscape. CyberNorth works closely with other sector clusters across the region including FinTech, Space, HealthTech, Advanced Manufacturing and Renewables.
In addition to their strong regional presence, CyberNorth and CyNam are both also part of UKC3, the UK Cyber Cluster Collaboration. Together they are on a mission to facilitate and level up the divide across the North through the Northern Cyber Clusters Collaboration project, which aims to better understand cyber security assets and key cyber security 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.
