The London Office for Rapid Cybersecurity Advancement (LORCA) has announced 20 scaleups selected to join its fourth cohort of cyber innovators, LORCA’s largest and most international yet.
Automation and AI-based products recur regularly in the list of new cohort members, as industry searches for more methods to fight off machine-speed threats; quantum and cryptography, zero-trust technologies and supply chain risk analysis solutions are also prevalent.
Although most of the businesses selected are British, the fourth iteration also saw a number of international applications reflected in the final cohort, which includes firms from Israel, Spain, Switzerland, Denmark, Singapore and the US.
Delivered by Plexal, the innovation centre at Here East in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, pictured, the year-long programme will support the companies to secure investment, access markets and participate in overseas trade missions.
LORCA takes no equity or IP in the scaleups, which will also receive technical and commercial support from the programme’s delivery partner Deloitte and engineering know-how from the Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) at Queen’s University Belfast.
After launching in June 2018 with backing from the Department from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, LORCA has now enrolled 55 companies, which have collectively gone on to secure £58m in investment. For example, LORCA firms during 2019 included Privitar and Crypto Quantique securing $40m and $8m funding rounds respectively. ThinkCyber was also selected as a finalist in the NYCx Moonshot Cyber Challenge, while CyberOwl won a contract with the Ministry of Defence.
Firms were invited to apply based on three innovation themes:
Connected Economy: Our post-breach economy is more connected than ever, presenting new challenges for businesses that must stay resilient against threats targeting them directly, but also those impacting their supply chains and networks.
Connected Everything: The challenge of securing millions of devices is stark, but this is heightening exponentially as the digital and physical worlds converge. From transport systems to the National Grid, the world around us must be secured at every access point if society is to adopt a digitally enabled, efficient infrastructure without risking human safety.
Connected Everyone: From disinformation to political interference, cyber threats have evolved beyond issues of corporate reputation and are having an increasing impact on society. Cybersecurity technologies must adapt to this shift.
Saj Huq, Programme Director, LORCA, said: “LORCA exists to bring cutting-edge technology to market and to enable the most promising cyber innovators become globally competitive businesses. The international reach and the variety of solutions within our incoming fourth cohort is an exciting demonstration of both the strength and attractiveness of the UK market, as well as an illustration of the increasingly prominent role that LORCA plays as a convener and collaborator within the global innovation ecosystem.”
The latest cohort:
Acreto
Acreto delivers a Security-as-a-Utility capability that protects distributed and mobile platforms. It can help you protect any technology, operating on any type of network, from anywhere.
Anzen Technologies Systems
The company’s patented technology allows organisations to securely move highly sensitive or classified data from on-premises storage to the public cloud, while retaining their data sovereignty.
Avnos
This cloud-based security platform can expand perimeter defence beyond the enterprise network, providing cloud-delivered protection for devices.
Contingent
Contingent is an AI-powered enterprise platform that can reduce the burden of collecting, verifying and monitoring supply chain risk data.
Continuum Security
Continuum Security helps companies build secure software by embedding security in the design of their systems.
Darkbeam
Darkbeam’s non-invasive threat reconnaissance platform gives you digital risk insights in seconds.
Heimdal Security
This cyber company builds products that anticipate threatscape trends. Its security suite helps individuals and organisations protect their valuable data.
Keyless
Keyless is a deeptech cybersecurity company that’s building a privacy-preserving biometric authentication and personal identity management platform which eliminates the need for businesses to centrally store and manage biometric data, passwords, and any other sensitive information without compromising on convenience or privacy.
Kinnami
The data security company equips users with the tools they need to secure and protect highly confidential documents and data.
L7 Defence
The company’s solution autonomously monitors, detects and blocks API attacks, freeing security teams from managing endless configurations and rules.
Orpheus
The company’s award-winning technologies collect huge volumes of cyber risk data, which they analyse using machine learning and a highly skilled team to enable you to stop your cyber risks before they happen.
Osirium
Specialising in privileged access security, the company’s software allows customers to manage all privileged access and automate complex business and IT processes.
Risk Ledger
Risk Ledger’s vendor risk management solution combines a secure social network with a risk management platform. This enables organisations to run a risk assurance programme against their vendors.
ShieldIOT
ShieldIOT enables integrators and service providers to secure critical IoT networks in settings such as smart cities, smart grid and transportation.
SureCert
SureCert’s digital identity platform is for background checking for recruitment and ID verification. Like a credit check, it turns personal information into a score.
ThreatAware
Helping companies monitor and manage their cyber protection in real time, ThreatAware is a single pane of glass on every aspect of an organisation’s cybersecurity – including all hardware, software, cloud services and IT compliance standards.
ThunderCipher (Licel)
The company provides application shielding to clients, from fintech to government to medtech, military and aerospace.
Variti
Variti specialises in malicious bot detection and associated shielding technologies, especially for the verticals most at risk such as ecommerce, media, entertainment and financial sectors. It protects websites, apps and APIs from fraud.
VIVIDA
VIVIDA combines story-telling and interactive virtual reality to develop cybersecurity awareness and education. Its VR experiences are designed to change attitudes and behaviour, make cybersecurity play a bigger role in a company’s culture and reduce the risk factor.
Westgate Cyber Security
The company helps organisations darken their networks and prevent cyber attacks with invisible network access gates which only materialise when certain trust standards are met.
