This concerning figure is just one of the myriad findings from Netskope’s most recent Cloud and Threat Report: Global Cloud and Web Malware Trends, published to provide enterprises worldwide with intelligence and insight on active malware threats.
Persisting as the go-to tactic for threat actors to establish a foothold in enterprise organisations is social engineering — the act of influencing, deceiving, or manipulating a victim to compromise security and consequently gain access to personal or financial information.
In Q1, trojans — malware samples that are disguised as legitimate files to trick users into downloading them — accounted for 60% of all malware downloads, indicating that it continues to be a popular technique for threat actors and has a high success rate. Phishing downloads, meanwhile, accounted for 13% of all malware downloads in 2023’s first quarter.
In terms of newer developments, the report pointed to the rise in how search engine data voids are being weaponised. A data void is a search query that turns up little to no results, meaning that content matching the query has a high likelihood of being displayed near or at the top of the result set.
On this rising trend, Netskope says that threat actors have “cleverly crafted malware payloads and malware delivery sites to exploit data voids, using those uncommon combinations of search terms to trick victims into downloading malware.”
In fact, in Q1, nearly 10% of all malware downloads were referred from search engines because of weaponised data voids, and also malicious ads appearing alongside search engine results.
The cybersecurity firm’s research also highlighted that one notable way in which threat actors are attempting to fly under the radar is by distributing malware over widely-used enterprise channels. This is so that the malware transfer may potentially bypass security controls and blend in with normal traffic.
With this in mind, cloud enterprise apps — such as OneDrive, Sharepoint, and Amazon S3 — are becoming increasingly popular channels for malware delivery, with 55% of HTTP/HTTPS malware downloads coming from cloud apps in Q1, marking a 35% increase over Q1 2022.
The report also underscored how malware detection remains to be a challenge for enterprises, especially as the number of malware families and variants are constantly growing.
Specifically, Netskope detected downloads of more than 60,000 distinct malware types in Q1, 72% of which were either new variants of existing families or new malware families entirely.
In response to the ever-evolving threat of malware, Netskope recommends undertaking a multitude of actions and interventions, such as: inspecting all HTTP/HTTPS downloads; ensuring security controls recursively inspect the content of popular archive files (like ZIPs); as well as providing education to users about social engineering techniques, among other strategies.
To read Cloud and Threat Report: Global Cloud and Web Malware Trends and its recommendations in full, click here.
To be human is to be tasked with a deluge of decisions each day. And from the lesser, more menial ones to the larger decisions that are far more consequential, we all want to settle on and make the choices we feel are the correct ones.
For those working in the upper echelons of government — the prime minister, seniors ministers, and sometimes senior civil servants — committing to the right (read: the most beneficial and positive) decisions for the country, its environment, and its population can be a far more difficult task, however.
Such important choices shouldn’t be made without sufficient information and intelligence, nor should they be based purely on feeling. And Laura Gilbert, the Chief Analyst and Director of Data Science at 10 Downing Street, knows what these high-ranking, governmental decision-makers should have to help them land on the best decisions possible: data.
During the DIGIT Leader 2023 summit — held at Edinburgh’s Dynamic Earth on April 27th — Gilbert talked through how the 23-person-strong team she directs is bringing data-led decision-making to the heart of UK government, and how the team is working to ensure that a data-appreciative culture permeates more widely throughout government, not just its centre.
Here’s what Laura Gilbert’s insightful, interesting keynote — attended by over 300 tech leaders and audience members — covered.
Joining a historic institution — and bringing more data, tech, and innovation into it
At the beginning of her talk, Gilbert — or rather, Dr. Gilbert, seeing as she holds a Ph.D. in Particle Physics and GRID Computing from the University of Oxford (while also having a wealth of industry experience, such as serving as CTO in a medtech startup) — explained that working at 10 Downing Street was wholly unexpected.
While searching for a new opportunity in 2020 following the successful sale of the just-mentioned startup, she noticed — and subsequently became interested in — Downing Street’s Director of Data Science position that was advertised online. But, despite Gilbert’s interest, she didn’t anticipate being hired for the role. “I threw a CV at it with absolutely no expectations whatsoever. I thought, ‘That won’t happen,’ and I was very surprised to be offered the job,” she confided.
Gilbert’s work at 10DS (“No.10 Data Science”) was cut out for her from the get-go: “I showed up on the first day and I sat down with my new line manager,” she continued. “He said, ‘I’ve got one piece of advice for you.’ I said, ‘Brilliant, what is it?’” His advice, according to Gilbert, was this: “‘You’ve got six months to have an impact.’”
To make that impact — and to aid with levelling-up governmental decision-making — it was imperative to begin changing how ministers and the like perceive, access, and apply data; an effort that must’ve been deemed worthwhile and impactful, considering that the team’s efforts on this front have only ramped up since then.
Gilbert shared that 10DS spends the vast majority of its time working on data-oriented tools — such as interactive dashboards — to help with the delivery of informative, relevant data pertinent to the policies and projects being discussed internally. “80% percent of the time we spend literally building tools. So we get data, we build models, and we present those in meetings,’” she explained.
Though, Gilbert added the important caveat that the team’s job “is not to tell [decision-makers] what to decide; we definitely would flag if we think a decision is clearly not supported by evidence, but we’re not going to tell them what to do.”
Despite the expected hurdles — such as time constraints, and the availability (or lack thereof) of data — Gilbert revealed that the purpose-built data tools ship quickly; they have to. “Our turnaround time — from being asked a question, producing a dashboarding product in Python that’s live and working and ready for a ministerial meeting — is somewhere between 24 hours and seven days. That’s the kind of timeframe we’re working to,” Gilbert divulged.
Delivering interactive, intelligent, and informative data tools
So what does an example of a data tool or model built by Gilbert’s team look like, exactly? One particular example provided by Gilbert concerned a data dashboard for HS2 — the high-speed rail line linking Scotland with Manchester, Birmingham, and London (and vice versa).
With the dashboard, users can essentially see a map of the HS2 infrastructure, and then view the various direct and indirect effects — from financial impacts to travel time — that decisions around it could potentially have. “It’s going to give you an estimate of what we think is important,” Gilbert disclosed. “So: Where does it fall in the cost spectrum? When are the benefits going to be delivered to the public? It’s an idea of value for money.”
However, Gilbert acknowledged that the value for money aspect can be somewhat tenuous when it comes to transport infrastructure. “You’ve got your direct cost, you’ve got some kind of estimate of how it’s going to impact businesses along the route and in other parts of the country, it’s going to impact your access to healthcare, it’s going to impact housing prices — all sorts of things. It’s difficult to do, but we’ll have the best stab we can and come up with at least a relative idea of which options look like better value for money and, crucially, how much faster it makes people’s journeys, which is the outcome that we’re trying to hit with this,” she said.
“[HS2] is an example of where we’re turning a lot of very complicated data into something that people — who don’t have a lot of time, and perhaps not a lot of expertise of working with numbers — are going to be able to understand and weigh up the benefits, and then go ahead and make a decision,” Gilbert explained further.
Another instance of an internal, purpose-built data tool is the Net Zero Map, which provides eye-catching visualisations on the impact of potential net zero-related policy decisions. “Policy around net zero is phenomenally intricate and complicated, and it’s very expensive. We have targets that we need to hit by 2050, and there are a number of ways that we can hit those targets,” Gilbert noted.
“What [the Map] would do — if you’re looking at it in real life — is, it would let you select the policies that you’re going to fund, and it’s going to give you an idea of what that costs. Then, it’s going to show you, through time, how the flow of energy in the country moves from mostly grey — fossil fuels — to mostly colourful — renewables. You can play this through time, and use it to have conversations about […] how the costs and benefits play out,” described Gilbert.
To boot, Gilbert mentioned that the team builds “targeted interventions”: tools that won’t take too much time and effort overall, but will ultimately have a profound impact.
For example, one targeted intervention is rAPId. “rAPId is literally an API system,” she said. “We’re aware that departments aren’t sharing data; they don’t necessarily know how.” In response, a lightweight API solution was built. It provides users with a browser interface where CSV files can be dragged and dropped, thereby making it simpler for everybody — no matter their department — to both share and access the most up-to-date data.
Helping wise decisions come to the fore
If 10DS allocates around 80% of its time to building accessible, informative data tools such as the dashboard for HS2 and the Net Zero Map, what’s happening for the other 20% of the time?
According to Gilbert, the 23-person team is undertaking numerous actions to help further usher in a data-appreciate culture more widely in government, ultimately bettering governmental decision-making. “We spend our remaining time thinking very carefully, strategically, about what we can do with the effort we have available that will invoke more change,” she revealed.
As part of these efforts, the team actively shows decision-makers across departments the various tools and projects they’re working on, thereby piquing interest from ministers across government. “We always go and show people what we’re doing; we never just tell them,” stated Gilbert. “People, when they see something shiny — and there’s a reason we’re using interactive dashboards — […] go, ‘Ooo,’ and want to pick it, and they want to play with it. […] We’ll show them what we’re doing, and we’ll demonstrate what they can have.”
While it may sound relatively straightforward, the act of being intentionally visible — and open and communicative to boot — is having the desired effect. As Gilbert explained, “We drive demand, because ministers from other departments and other senior stakeholders will come and see it and go, ‘Downing Street’s got this thing that talks about our data… why’s that not in my office?’ And what you’ll find is, if a minister wants something, it happens bloody quickly. So, by targeting the very senior decision-makers who have got a vested interest in doing things better, we can roll out this technology a lot more quickly.”
What’s more, 10DS is targeting how people in government think about data and evidence, as well as how they go about — and could improve — their decision-making.
For instance, Gilbert mentioned that “We have programs that train senior civil servants, and we have people that can apply to come in and give video talks about how to think about […] data and evidence.”
And when it comes to the larger backdrop of decision-making, Gilbert stated that “We also run programmes that try and encourage people to think differently in a more general sense,” helping logical decisions come to the fore, despite the myriad problems and pressures of working in government.
As she explained further, “When you are having to make a decision very quickly — and it can be a very big decision — you are heavily biassed by what’s happening at the moment. What’s in the papers at the moment? What are your pressures from perhaps more senior ministers, or from different departments, or from the Treasury who’s controlling the money — what do they want? What do they think is the right thing to do? […] It can be very difficult to untangle the best outcome and the best way to do things from the stress that people are really under.”
One way 10DS is trying to stimulate better, more rigorous decision-making is through a strategy known as the “pre-mortem.” Essentially, the pre-mortem tasks teams to imagine the categorical failure of a project. The team then works backward to determine what could’ve led to its failure to ensure that, in reality, such actions are avoided.
In a governmental context, then, the pre-mortem can assist ministers to acknowledge any pressures and biasses that could be at play, and help them to circumvent unwise decisions. And it’s but one of the various methods that 10DS is trying to deploy to bolster governmental thought, deliberation, and decision-making.
Looking towards a data- and tech-driven future in government
During the concluding section of her keynote, Gilbert made it clear that 10DS’s efforts of bringing data-led decision-making to the heart of UK government — and more widely — has by no means reached its apex. The transformation is still very much in progress, with efforts looking to be ramped up further. “We’re really wanting to draw in a lot more data and digital expertise, and to bring in new technologies,” she divulged.
To drive these efforts forward, there’s one group of professionals that government is particularly in need of: technologists. “We want to attract more technologists to come and work in government,” Gilbert continued. “We’re on the cusp of a really big change, and we need people with skill sets and drive to come and deliver some of these programs for us and make technology change really happen.”
If you happen to be a technologist yourself, here’s a(nother) decision for you to make: Will you answer Gilbert’s call, and help drive data-led decision-making in government?
Amid the rapid, world- and business-impacting advancements in AI and automation, Krishna allegedly said that IBM’s hiring of non-customer-facing positions — such as in human resources — will likely be slowed or suspended.
In terms of numbers, these back-office roles amount to approximately 26,000 workers. According to Bloomberg, IBM’s CEO said: “I could easily see 30% of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year-period.” This equates to around 7,800 non-customer-facing positions.
Part of any reduction would include not replacing roles vacated by attrition, an IBM spokesperson is said to have added.
Krishna apparently went on to say that more mundane tasks — such as providing employment verification letters, or moving employees between departments — will likely be fully-automated.
He also supposedly added that some human resources functions — evaluating workforce productivity and composition, for instance — probably won’t be replaced over the next decade.
The CEO’s comments come at a time when the knock-on effects of generative AI are being heatedly debated in tech circles and beyond, with its impact on work and employment being at the forefront of these discussions.
The findings of recent research conducted by the World Economic Forum, for instance, suggest that 23% of all jobs are expected to change in the next five years, with AI and tech set to play a fundamental part in global labour market turbulence.
Meanwhile, according to a report from Goldman Sachs, generative AI could expose 300 million full-time jobs to automation.
In terms of its current hiring outlook, IBM is said to be continuing to hire for software development and customer-facing roles. The company employs around 260,000 to 280,000 workers across the board.
Earlier this year, IBM was just one of the many large-scale tech companies to announce job cuts — around 4,000 workers. However, Krishna allegedly noted that IBM had brought on about 7,000 people in this year’s first quarter, meaning that workforce numbers have risen overall.
The Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2023 — which has compiled perspectives from 803 international companies that, collectively, employ more than 11 million workers across 27 industry clusters — investigated how influential business and labour trends could impact employment between now and 2027.
It underscores that, despite potential widespread disruption induced by technological advancement and adoption, the net impact of most technologies is ultimately set to be positive.
AI, e-commerce and digital trade, digital platforms and apps, and agriculture technologies in particular have been anticipated to instigate “significant labour market disruption.”
Meanwhile, big data analytics, climate change and environmental management technologies, and the encryption and cybersecurity sectors have been hailed to be the largest drivers of job growth.
In terms of figures and statistics, some 75% of companies surveyed said they expect to adopt AI technologies during the next five years, highlighting how businesses are readying to act following rapid advancements in artificial intelligence exemplified by chatbots like ChatGPT.
While 50% of organisations believe AI will create job growth and 25% expect it to create job losses, training workers to utilise AI and big data will be prioritised by 42% of companies in the coming years, ranking slightly behind analytical thinking (48%) and creative thinking (43%) in perceived importance.
On average, the employment of data analysts, big data specialists, AI machine learning specialists, and cybersecurity professionals is anticipated to grow by 30% by 2027.
Speaking of big data, it ranks at the top among technologies seen to create jobs, with 65% of respondents expecting job growth in associated roles.
With the report’s findings, Saadia Zahidi, the World Economic Forum’s Managing Director, says that workers across the globe need to be adequately supported by both businesses and governments while labour market turbulence is navigated.
“For people around the world, the past three years have been filled with upheaval and uncertainty for their lives and livelihoods, with COVID-19, geopolitical and economic shifts, and the rapid advancement of AI and other technologies now risks adding more uncertainty,” she said.
“The good news is that there is a clear way forward to ensure resilience. Governments and businesses must invest in supporting the shift to the jobs of the future through the education, reskilling and social support structures that can ensure individuals are at the heart of the future of work.”
To read the World Economic Forum’s latest report, click here.
These internal statistics come from a recently-published blog post written by members of Google’s Android Security and Privacy Team, and the Compute Trust and Safety Team.
The authors suggest that new Google Play security features, policy enhancements, bettered app review processes, “continuous investments in machine learning systems,” and other efforts have helped in the fight against bad apps and bad actors over the course of last year.
By blocking the publishing of 1.43M violative apps, and banning 173K “bad” accounts — accounts used by malicious developers to publish apps that intrinsically violate the marketplace’s policies — Google approximates that it’s prevented over $2 billion (around £1.6B) in fraudulent and abusive transactions.
Google also noted that phone, email, and other identity verification methods have contributed to a reduction in the number of bad accounts.
Further, Google cites developer outreach and education — as well as strengthened Android platform protections and policies — as resulting in the prevention of approximately 500K submitted Play apps from unnecessarily accessing sensitive permissions over the last three years.
Speaking of developers, collaborating and supporting app developers appears to be a particular focus for Google in its efforts to ensure Google Play remains as safe and secure as possible.
“As the Android ecosystem expands, it’s critical for us to work closely with the developer community to ensure they have the tools, knowledge, and support to build secure and trustworthy apps that respect user data security and privacy,” wrote the post’s authors.
For instance, due to Google’s App Security Improvements Program, developers apparently fixed around 500K security weaknesses impacting roughly 300K apps with a combined install base of approximately 250B instals.
Android OS updates are also having a positive knock-on effect regarding security and Google Play, Google says.
“In addition to the Google Play features and policies that are central to providing a safe experience for users, each Android OS update brings privacy, security, and user experience improvements,” stated the post’s authors.
“To ensure users realize the full benefits of these advances — and to maintain the trusted experience people expect on Google Play — we collaborate with developers to ensure their apps work seamlessly on newer Android versions.
“With the new Target API Level policy, we’re strengthening user security and privacy by protecting users from installing apps that may not have the full set of privacy and security features offered by the latest versions of Android.”
Google’s Play-oriented security work is indubitably a necessary, ongoing endeavour. Not least because, just two weeks ago, a report from Kaspersky — the cybersecurity solutions provider — pointed to growing trends around using Google Play as a platform for malicious and unwanted applications.
The Geospatial Commission’s 12-month data pilot programme is being undertaken in an attempt to help reduce the barrier to accessing relevant data, and to level-up actions undertaken in policy areas such as land use, environmental monitoring, and emergency response.
Earth Observation is the gathering and presentation of information regarding planet Earth’s physical, chemical, and biological systems. Through remote sensing technologies, useful data is supplied on the status of the natural and man-made environment.
The Geospatial Commission, which is a part of the UK Government’s Department for Technology, Science and Innovation (DSIT), is the committee responsible for setting the UK’s geospatial strategy and promoting the use of geospatial data in the country.
The data and services for the EO pilot programme will be delivered by Airbus Defence and Space — a division of the Airbus group, and NASA partner, responsible for defence and aerospace products — who’s the winning supplier following a “competitive tender process.”
The initiative will involve up to 35 public sector bodies who will use and test the EO-derived data in myriad use cases.
The pilot programme was announced by Viscount Camrose, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for DSIT. “This government is taking action to unlock the significant potential of fast-developing location technologies,” he said.
“The Earth Observation capability that is being piloted by the Geospatial Commission will test how we can drive innovation in the heart of government service delivery, from effective disaster response to enhancing the science behind our understanding of land use change.”
The Geospatial Commission’s Director, Thalia Baldwin, added: “Our Earth Observation pilot is aiming to keep the UK in its high geospatial orbit, increasing public sector capability and the demand for market innovation through testing new applications of EO data and technologies.”
Paul Russell, the Head of Intelligence UK for Airbus, also commented, saying: “We are delighted to be working with the Geospatial Commission on this initiative and we look forward to seeing how public sector bodies will work with our satellite data to support the delivery of critical public services.”
Last year, the Geospatial Commission co-funded research alongside the Satellite Applications Catapult which underscored the growing demand for EO data across 154 use cases from 125 organisations.
Further, the research identified the most significant barriers to the public sector’s wider adoption of EO data, such as divergent levels of technical understanding, and the challenges of keeping pace with the offerings from the developing EO market.
Total investee companies are now up to 18, with Eos’s latest investment being Bioliberty, the Edinburgh-headquartered robotic rehabilitation specialist.
Three additional investments were also announced during Q1, including the £9.7 million Series A round in Dxcover, the clinical-stage diagnostics company.
The investment in Dxcover was made alongside Mercia Asset Management, Scottish Enterprise, the University of Strathclyde, SIS Ventures, and Norcliffe Capital.
Eos’s full portfolio, which now also features Bioliberty, includes Carcinotech, Chromacity, Cumulus Oncology, Dxcover, Nth, Green Bioactives, ENOUGH, GM Flow, ILC Therapeutics, Naturbeads, Novosound, Penrhos Bio, RAB Microfluidics, Rooser, Waire Health, Wobble Genomics, and Xelect.
In its latest team hire, Jill Arnold — the former Head of SIS Ventures — has joined the Scots investment firm as Investor Relations Director as the company looks to accelerate growth.
The recent hire strengthens a leadership team that also appointed Andrew Durkie as Partner, and Andy Lothian and Sandy Kennedy as Non-Executive Growth Advisors in 2022.
“From her time guiding RBS’s purpose-led strategy, to heading up the venture arm of Social Investment Scotland, Jill has demonstrated significant leadership and a highly-tuned understanding of the investment scene.
“The Eos team and I feel very fortunate to have her on board,” said Ana Stewart, Eos Partner and chair and author of the recently published Scottish commissioned Pathways: A New Approach for Women in Entrepreneurship review.
Founded in St Andrews in 2014 — and led by Managing Partner Andrew McNeill since 2018 — the firm points to strong deal flow and portfolio growth leading to the evolution of its strategy.
“Access to capital and access to expertise are the two main challenges for all early-stage companies. We remain seed-stage investors, but as our portfolio scales we are reacting by bringing in more later-stage growth capital and a network to scale outside of Scotland into larger commercial markets,” said McNeill.
“Eos specialises in knowledge-intensive science and technology that addresses key global issues, so our own evolution as a business is taking place in the context of individuals and family offices having more consideration of the purpose of their investments, alongside financial returns.”
Eos invests in four key impact areas: disease diagnosis, prevention and treatment; energy security, climate change and pollution; food and water security; and sustainability of industrial processes and infrastructure.
The firm operates the Eos Syndicate, Eos EIS Innovation Fund, and Eos Venture Partnerships, as part of a wider strategy to support the funding of Scottish innovation both at and beyond seed stage.
Andrew McNeill added: “As our portfolio continues to mature, we are seeing value inflection points with a number of Series A, B and C rounds, as well as exit opportunities. Our metric for success is growth and exits, as opposed to amounts invested.
“However, it can be helpful to quantify our inputs, investing in the region of £15 million at seed stage on an annual basis. As our current portfolio moves up the gears, we are projecting that they will need in excess of £170m of growth capital requirements in the next 18 months.”
As a programme, BridgeAI aims to provide £100 million in funding — which has partly come from Innovate UK and the Technologies Mission Fund (TMF) — to AI innovators to develop new, trusted AI services and technologies for businesses in four high growth potential sectors to help bolster their productivity, among other benefits.
The four sectors — agriculture, construction, transportation, and the creative industries — have been specified as areas of focus by BridgeAI due to the transformative change that could be realised with AI adoption.
The programme is also setting out to connect such businesses with AI experts, provide AI-oriented support, facilitate knowledge sharing, and upskill, as to drive growth in AI.
In a pre-recorded video played to the audience in attendance at the London launch event, Viscount Camrose — the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in the Department for Science, Technology, and Innovation (DSIT) — introduced BridgeAI as “a fantastic new Government investment to empower UK businesses in this critical technology.”
“By stimulating the adoption of AI technologies and bridging the gap between AI adopters and developers, this programme can help increase UK productivity, and create new opportunities for businesses, jobs, and economic growth,” he continued.
“BridgeAI’s mission is to empower UK businesses operating in low-AI-maturity sectors; including agriculture, construction, creative industries, and transport, to adopt AI through multi-million-pound funding and support.”
“We’re investing in this programme because, we believe, that while so many talk about the challenges to the world of work, AI has the potential to support, enhance, and amplify the efforts of our fantastic UK businesses.”
After Viscount Camrose, Will Drury, the Interim Executive Director Digital & Technologies at Innovate UK, provided additional context and information on the reasoning behind BridgeAI’s launch. “How do we increase adoption through our industries? That’s what this programme is seeking to address,” he said during his speech.
“We want to support developers, create easy-to-use, easily accessible, and easy-to-integrate solutions. We want to give businesses the confidence to invest.”
At a later point of his speech, Drury noted: “We’re not going to just provide funding. […] But it’s that support, that networking, the different streams of more specific activity — which will be covered today — that’s going to allow this large intervention to make a cohesive benefit to business, society, and the UK.”
A collaborative BridgeAI competition — “Feasibility studies for Artificial Intelligence solutions” — will also provide investment of up to £5 million for innovative AI projects that address challenges or opportunities in the four aforementioned target sectors of agriculture, construction, transportation, and the creative industries.
The unveiling of the BridgeAI programme comes just days after the UK Government announced that it has pledged an initial £100 million in funding for the soon-to-be-created UK AI Taskforce.
Funded by the likes of Scottish Enterprise and Innovate UK, the T-shaped robot has been designed to offer farmers and grain aggregators better insight into the environmental conditions of grain crops — such as barley and wheat — when stored in sheds or silos.
Crover’s robot has built-in moisture and temperature sensors, and uses two dome-shaped wheels to manoeuvre itself through grain and other material in a bulk stack. Then, it feeds back data and analysis to a dashboard, providing grain aggregators with a more precise understanding of the grain’s status.
In particular, humidity and temperature have notable effects on grain storage, contributing to the infestation of insects and mould which can cause farmers to eradicate significant portions of their stored crops.
The Edinburgh-based startup has also recently become resident at the National Robotarium — a new £22.4 million research facility opened in 2022 at Heriot-Watt University’s Edinburgh campus — with Crover benefitting from its incubation facilities, labs, and engineering expertise.
On the grain robot’s launch — and on working with the National Robotarium — Lorenzo Conti, the founder and managing director of Crover, said: “Traditional methods like spear sampling grain are time-consuming and laborious and quite often impractical and dangerous.”
“Our device is designed to be controlled from one spot and saves whoever is operating it many hours of work as well as improving accuracy. The robot can ‘swim’ through the grain quickly generating a 3D map of temperature and moisture across the stack.
“This kind of insight can help people like farmers to better understand the condition of their grain and make informed decisions earlier like increasing ventilation or taking pest control measures.
“Working with the National Robotarium has significantly supported Crover’s development by providing us with access to state-of-the-art office and lab facilities and an extensive ecosystem of collaborators, industry experts and academic teams.
“It’s rare to be surrounded by a team who understand what it means to develop complex robots and we’re excited to continue sharing Crover’s journey with them.”
The National Robotarium’s Chief Operating Officer, Steve Maclaren, commented, saying: “The National Robotarium was launched with a mandate to assist all types of partners to accelerate research from laboratory to market, reduce cost and risk, increase opportunity and, ultimately, pave the way for the UK to take a global leadership role in AI and robotics technology.
“Innovations like Crover’s grain storage device — which could help solve a global problem for the world’s agriculture sector — are a great example of this mandate in action.
“The National Robotarium continues to be a leading collaborative hub, bringing together academics and global companies. Working with tenant companies like Crover, we want to provide a catalyst for entrepreneurship, and deliver sustainable economic benefit to the whole of the UK, its industries and society.”
Malcolm Offord, the UK Government Minister for Scotland, also added: “It’s fantastic to see that farming and food and drink-boosting innovations like Crover’s new ‘grain-surfing’ robot will benefit from being part of the National Robotarium.
“Projects like this demonstrate the collaborative benefits the hub is providing, with resulting economic and environmental advances delivered to the UK.
“The UK Government is supporting the National Robotarium facilities at Heriot-Watt University with £21 million as part of more than £2.2 billion investment to level up communities across Scotland.”
Led by CEO Dr. Alan Walker — a former Vice President of Global Commercial Operations at ProStrakan who has overseen multiple international biotech mergers and acquisitions — ILC Therapeutics raised a £3.5 million investment round in 2021, with participation from Eos, Scottish Enterprise, and investor Robert Kopple.
Most recently, the Scots biotech firm completed an additional £2 million funding round led by existing investors in Q4 2022.
Having opened new laboratory facilities at its BioCity headquarters near Glasgow, ILC is preparing its lead hybrid interferon drug, Alfacyte, for manufacture in Belgium this year before moving towards Clinical Trial Authorisation (CTA) in 2024.
Alfacyte is currently in development as an antiviral medicine for the treatment of upper respiratory tract viral infections (RVIs), including SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.
Alfacyte — and other ILC hybrid interferons — have the potential to become innovative antiviral treatments in the ongoing fight against COVID-19, as well as for different infections including respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), HIV, and hepatitis.
Further, ILC is testing its second lead product, Dermacyte, for the treatment of atoptic dermatitis — the most common form of eczema and psoriasis in human skin and canines. It’s also entering a R&D partnership with an international veterinary group during Q2 to develop its Caniferon product to help treat atopic dermatitis in dogs.
ILC is expected to embark on a Series A investment round over the next twelve months, with a view to a possible post-investment round IPO.
“We have achieved significant milestones over the last twelve months, which have enabled us to move rapidly towards our next phase of growth,” said Dr. Alan Walker.
“Coupled with VC and M&A activity elsewhere in the sector, we believe the timing is opportune to engage with the UK and international investor community around supporting our strategic plan and growth prospects through a Series A round that could be followed by a stock market flotation.”
The Scots biotech firm has also appointed Dr. Owain Millington as Vice President and Head of Preclinical Development. With a long career in life sciences leadership teams, Dr. Millington joins Professor W.H. Stimson, ILC’s Chief Scientific Officer and founder of the Department of Immunology at the University of Strathclyde, and Dr. Dawn Firmin, ILC’s Head of Technical Operations.
ILC is chaired by Peter Bains, who brings over three decades of leadership experience in the biopharmaceutical industry including senior strategic and operational roles, and a 20-year career with GSK.
This is just one of the findings uncovered from Trellix’s The Mind of the CISO 2023 report, where over 500 global CISOs working in large (1,000+ employee) organisations across myriad industries were questioned about how they’re faring in their security efforts, and the new and continued challenges they’re facing.
While 96% of respondents said that they need better solutions for cybersecurity effectiveness, 94% agreed that having the right tools in place would save them significant time. A further 81% said that having the right tech would reduce the amount of overtime they work.
The report also highlighted the sheer number of tools that SOC teams have at their disposal: 25 is the average number of security tools per organisation, with 58% of all organisations surveyed using more than 20 security solutions. Despite the quantity of security tools available internally, only 34% of CISOs said they have the tech needed to be cyber secure.
On this overproliferation of tech, one CISO — who works in the US public sector — commented: “We get tool exhaustion at some places where money is just thrown at tools and they’re only using a quarter of it.”
In terms of further challenges for CISOs, 35% said there were too many different sources of information; the same number pointed to the changing legal landscape and regulatory mandates as a notable challenge; 34% mentioned a growing attack surface; the same number said a shortage of skilled staff and the ability to recruit and retain knowledgeable talent; and 31% said a lack of buy-in and use from other parts of the company.
These added and continued pressures are undeniably making CISOs’ jobs more strained. According to the survey, 86% of respondents — either in their past or current role — have managed a major cybersecurity incident. And when a breach happens, 72% feel fully or mostly accountable, feeling worried and under pressure as they resolve the incident.
On the subject of CISOs and stress, just two months ago, DIGIT reported on the news that 25% of cybersecurity leaders will pursue different roles by 2025 due to workplace stress.
Additionally, Trellix’s report also underscored the impact that large security incidents have across the company. The five most poignant company-wide impacts are as follows: 44% of respondents cited the SecOps team being under significant stress; 43% said major attrition to the SecOps team; another 43% said increased insurance premiums; 37% said network downtime; and 34% said customer and/or employee data loss.
Commenting on the report’s publication, Bryan Palma, CEO of Trellix, said: “Our research shows CISOs are motivated by a mission to protect. Yet, CISOs tell us they feel unsupported, unheard, and invisible.”
“I’ve been a CISO, it can be the loneliest position in tech,” Palma continued. “Now is the time, with AI in the hands of both good and bad actors, to revolutionize SecOps strategies and fight back against criminals. We need to empower our CISOs to win every time.”
To read the The Mind of the CISO ebook, click here.
The team of researchers studied the various ways drivers and cyclists co-communicate — both directly and indirectly — while on the road, with the research highlighting the need for new systems in autonomous vehicles (AVs) capable of replicating these complex social interactions.
The team’s findings have resulted in a series of recommendations and suggestions on how, in the decades to come, self-driving AVs should behave safely around cyclists.
One of the suggestions is that self-driving cars could have displays integrated onto the car’s exterior. This could take the form of a series of traffic-light-like coloured LEDs which outwardly display the driver’s intentions to slow down or speed up, give way, and manoeuvre.
Another recommendation is that cyclists could wear “smart glasses,” which could display the AV driver’s intentions to the wearer, facilitating direct communication. For example, AVs could signal that the right of way is up for negotiation, with orange lights displayed on the vehicle and a vibration sent to cyclists’ glasses as a non-verbal message.
Leading the research was Stephen Brewster of the University of Glasgow’s School of Computing Science. On the research — and why it was undertaken in the first place — he said: “Cars and bikes share the same spaces on the roads, which can be dangerous – between 2015 and 2020, 84% of fatal bike accidents involved a motor vehicle, and there were more than 11,000 collisions.”
“There has been a lot of research in recent years on building safety features into autonomous vehicles to help keep pedestrians safe, but comparatively little on how AVs can safely share the road with cyclists.
“That’s a cause for concern as AVs become more commonplace on the roads. While pedestrians tend to meet AVs in highly controlled situations like road crossings, cyclists ride alongside cars for prolonged periods and rely on two-way interactions with drivers to determine each other’s intentions.
“It’s a much more complicated set of behaviours, which makes it a big challenge for future generations of AVs to tackle. Currently, self-driving cars currently offer very little direct feedback to cyclists to help them make critically important decisions like whether it’s safe to overtake or to switch lanes. Adding any guesswork to the delicate negotiations between car and bike has the potential to make the roads less safe.”
To develop and recommend potential solutions for these challenges, the team conducted their research by setting up two observational studies of road users in and around Glasgow.
They watched 414 separate interactions between cyclists and motorists at several city intersections during busy periods. The team then noted whether the riders and drivers were aware of each other occupying nearby space, how they indicated their intent for their next manoeuvre, how they negotiated who would move first, and how they communicated positive or negative feedback once the manoeuvre was completed.
The research team also equipped 12 volunteer cyclists with eye-tracking glasses and head-mounted video cameras, and then asked them to ride their regular commuting route to and from work.
The eye-tracking glasses recorded where the cyclists were looking during their journey, catching data on their gaze as it moved to the road surface, the exteriors and interiors of cars, road signs, and traffic signals.
According to the captured data, cyclists more frequently relied on information from road signs and traffic signals in situations like controlled intersections. That said, it was also found that cyclists looked at cars much more often to gauge drivers’ intentions in situations like roundabouts, uncontrolled junctions, and road works.
Ammar Al-Taie, who’s also of the University of Glasgow’s School of Computing Science, is a co-author of the paper. He commented: “Just like spoken languages, communication between cyclists and drivers varies from country to country.”
“We’re very conscious that this paper focuses specifically on UK roads – any future developments will need to take into account the differences in drivers’ and cyclists’ interactions across the world.”
The research, which was supported with funding from the University of Glasgow and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, will be presented at the Association for Computing Machinery Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Hamburg, Germany next week.
With the new bill, the Digital Markets Unit (DMU) — which is a part of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) — will have the power to impose added obligations on Big Tech companies, be able to enforce consumer law rather than going through court processes, and fine Big Tech firms up to 10% of their global turnover if they fail to comply.
Specifically, under the current draft of the sweeping legislation, those in key digital services with “strategic market status” — firms with a global turnover above £25 billion, or UK turnover above £1 billion — can be tasked by the DMU to follow targeted rules on how to behave and operate.
The Department of Business and Trade has outlined that the DMU may demand such companies to provide consumers with greater flexibility when buying products digitally, or to break down unnecessary barriers that prohibit users from using products on other devices and systems, thereby giving consumers more choice, for instance.
Further, such firms may be instructed by the DMU to open up their data to rival search engines, or to increase transparency regarding how app store or marketplace review systems work in practice, for example, as to promote fairer competition for startups and smaller businesses.
Another focus of the bill is fake reviews, banning the practice of facilitating fake reviews as well as advertising consumer reviews that aren’t checked by the firm to be genuine.
Subscription traps are also being targeted, with suggested rules to help consumers exit subscriptions more efficiently and effectively, and adding requirements for businesses to send reminders to customers when a trial or introductory period is soon to end.
As a draft, the bill can only come into effect following parliamentary approval, and is also subject to secondary legislation and the publication of guidance.
“Smartphones and online shopping have profoundly changed the landscape for businesses, consumers and the foundations of a modern thriving economy, which now lie in strong consumer choice, confidence and competition,” said Business and Trade Minister Kevin Hollinrake.
“From abuse of power by tech giants, to fake reviews, scams and rip-offs like being caught in a subscription trap — consumers deserve better. The new laws we’re delivering today will empower the CMA to directly enforce consumer law, strengthen competition in digital markets and ensure that people across the country keep hold of their hard-earned cash.”
Sarah Cardell, Chief Executive of the CMA, also commented, saying: “This has the potential to be a watershed moment in the way we protect consumers in the UK and the way we ensure digital markets work for the UK economy, supporting economic growth, investment and innovation.
“People rely on free and fair markets to get the best deal possible, but also expect that rules are in place to protect them when things go wrong. Proposals to give the CMA stronger enforcement powers when firms break consumer law – including the ability to directly impose fines for the first time – are crucial to ensure we can continue cracking down on rip-offs and underhand deals, helping to deter firms from taking advantage of people.
“Digital markets offer huge benefits, but only if competition enables businesses of all shapes and sizes the opportunity to succeed. This bill is a legal framework fit for the digital age. It will establish a tailored, evidenced-based and proportionate approach to regulating the largest and most powerful digital firms to ensure effective competition that benefits everyone.
“We look forward to supporting this bill as it passes through the legislative process and stand ready to use these new powers once approved by Parliament.”
The Taskforce, which is being modelled on Britain’s COVID-19 Vaccines Taskforce, is being set up to help further the UK’s capabilities in “safe and reliable” foundation models.
Foundation models are artificial intelligence systems that have been trained on a vast quantity of data, with the training leading to the AI being able to accomplish a range of objectives and tasks. Foundation models include large language models (LLMs), like OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 and GPT-4.
On top of developing reliable foundation models, the AI Taskforce is being tasked to aid the UK with becoming a leader in foundation models and their applications across the economy, and to help ensure that AI adoption and usage is carried out safely.
The £100M pledge highlights how the UK Government increasingly has AI innovation in its sights. As part of the funding announcement, the Government mentioned that AI is “predicted to raise global GDP by 7% over a decade, making its adoption a vital opportunity to grow the UK economy,” while also citing research that suggests “the broad adoption of such [AI] systems could triple national productivity growth rates.”
In particular, healthcare and education were suggested by the Government as sectors where AI innovation could be particularly promising, with AI helping to speed up illness diagnoses and drug discovery and development in medical settings, for example.
Reporting to the Prime Minister and the Tech Secretary, the Taskforce — which is set to be composed of government and industry experts — will be led by a Chair who will be announced this summer.
While the Chair’s appointment is ongoing, Matt Clifford, Chair of the Advanced Research and Innovation Agency, will advise the Prime Minister and Technology Secretary on the development of the taskforce.
“Harnessing the potential of AI provides enormous opportunities to grow our economy, create better-paid jobs, and build a better future through advances in healthcare and security,” said Prime Minister Sunak.
“By investing in emerging technologies through our new expert Taskforce, we can continue to lead the way in developing safe and trustworthy AI as part of shaping a more innovative UK economy.”
Tech Secretary Michelle Donelan added: “Developed responsibly, cutting-edge AI can have a transformative impact in nearly every industry. It can revolutionise the way we develop new medical treatments, tackle climate change and improve our public services, all while growing and future-proofing our economy.
“We need to act now to seize the opportunities AI can offer us in the future. We’re backing our expert taskforce with the funding to make our ambitions for an AI-enabled country a reality and keep the UK at the front of the pack in this emerging technology.
“To ensure such leadership, the greatest capability we can develop is in the safety and reliability of such systems. This will ensure that the public and business have the trust they need to confidently adopt this technology and fully realise its benefits. That is exactly what this taskforce will prioritise.”
The AI Taskforce funding announcement comes just weeks after the UK Government released its first whitepaper on AI regulation — when, simultaneously, an open letter backed by numerous tech leaders regarding the safety and reliability of AI began gaining traction.
Additionally, last week, DIGIT published news that the European Data Protection Board announced its intentions to create an AI taskforce to address the potential regulation of ChatGPT and its competitors.
The firm designs, tests, and manufactures specialised radiofrequency (RF) coils. RF coils are the devices behind generating and receiving the signals required to produce images of the human body for new generation, ultra-high field MRI scanners.
The bettered resolution for scanning will enable researchers to learn more about brain conditions such as stroke, vascular dementia, brain tumours, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s Disease in greater detail.
The accreditation of ISO 13485:2016, which formally recognises MR CoilTech’s capabilities in developing and delivering high-quality RF coils, is set to accelerate the company’s access to the global market, providing the firm with the opportunity for immediate growth.
“We are delighted to receive ISO accreditation, a major milestone for MR CoilTech,” said Dr Shajan Gunamony, Director of MR CoilTech and Head of MRI RF Engineering at the University of Glasgow.
“Achieving this internationally recognised quality standard will provide assurance to our customers in the quality, safety and efficiency of our RF coils.
“This accreditation will support MR CoilTech to continue to grow and deliver devices world-wide to enhance advanced imaging and allow researchers to study images at an exceptionally high resolution, advancing research and perhaps leading to new ways to diagnose or treat patients.”
MR CoilTech an industry partner in the Living Laboratory for Precision Medicine programme – a University of Glasgow-led programme focused on healthcare innovations that can be adopted into clinical practice.
As part of the Living Laboratory Coil Development project, MR CoilTech and Glaswegian product design company Wideblue are establishing new body part-specific coils with the 7T MRI scanner to extend the imaging capabilities and use of 7T MRI to more parts of the body than currently possible.
MR CoilTech says that the ISO accreditation will now support the development of a defined route to market for the devices developed in the Living Laboratory programme.
Barry Warden, Wideblue’s Managing Director, also commented, saying: “We have been working with MR CoilTech over a number of years, helping them with the design and development of their head coil.
“We are pleased to hear that they have received ISO13485 accreditation as it recognises all of their hard work bringing the next generation of MRI scanners to market.”
Further, Elaine Gemmell, Head of Regulatory Affairs at InnoScot Health, said: “We are delighted that MR CoilTech has successfully completed its ISO 13485:2016 audit and certification of its Quality Management System, and we are proud to have played a part in that journey through working very closely with the company to provide and implement their Quality Management System providing regulatory advice and support.
“ISO 13485:2016 is an internationally recognised quality standard, supporting the delivery of medical devices that consistently meet customer requirements and that are safe for their intended use.
“Importantly, it serves to confirm MR CoilTech’s status as a reliable provider of RF coils and accessories to the ultra-high field MRI research world.”
Social tariffs — low-cost broadband packages costing between £10 to £20 per month — are accessible to the over 4 million households across the UK receiving Universal Credit, Pension Credit, Jobseeker’s Allowance, or Income Support.
Ofcom’s research uncovered that while the take-up of social tariffs have quadrupled since January 2022, only 5.1% (220,000) households are utilising broadband deals which could help them to penny-pinch during the UK’s ongoing cost-of-living crisis. Ofcom suggests that such deals could save these households somewhere around £200 a year.
Additionally, Ofcom found that more providers are offering broadband social tariffs since the beginning of last year, and that 85% of people are now able to switch providers without incurring a fee. Current providers include BT, EE, NOW, Sky, and Virgin Media, among others. Further, social tariffs for mobile phones are now provided by three mobile providers.
However, despite the take-up of social tariffs quadrupling as well as more options to choose from, the majority (53%) of benefits claimants remain unaware of social tariffs, with Ofcom suggesting that broadband providers need to be more proactive in effectively communicating the availability of such packages to eligible customers.
Out of the 47% of benefits claimants who are aware of social tariffs, most had learned about the discounted packages through social media (26%) and television (21%). Only 9% found out they were eligible for social tariff broadband packages through their provider.
Further, Ofcom’s research highlighted that navigating provider websites and locating specific information regarding social tariffs can be challenging — Ofcom says incorrect information about broadband deals on some webpages was even discovered.
To help drive more awareness, Ofcom says that it’s raised its concerns with broadband providers, and has asked them to review their social tariff webpages to ensure clarity, accuracy, and accessibility.
Ofcom also says it’s urging TalkTalk and O2 to introduce social tariffs to the broadband and mobile markets respectively, with the expectation that switch over fees will also be waived.
“Hundreds of thousands of customers are now benefitting from the huge savings that can be made from securing a social tariff. But millions are still missing out on superfast speeds for super low prices – with many not aware they even exist,” said Lindsey Fussell, Ofcom’s Group Director, Network and Communications.
“We’re urging anyone who thinks they could be eligible for a discount deal to contact their provider today and potentially save hundreds of pounds. Providers should also do much more to help these customers find and access these deals, at a time when these savings could make a massive difference.”
Rocio Concha, the Director of Policy and Advocacy at Which?, also commented, saying: “With millions of households across the country struggling to make ends meet, it’s outrageous that some providers continue to conceal their social tariffs from customers.
“Broadband providers need to step up their efforts to promote their social tariffs to low-income consumers and ensure people aren’t missing out unnecessarily. They must also make sure customers do not have to pay any Early Termination Charges to move to another firm’s social tariff.
“We’d strongly encourage anyone who thinks they could be eligible for a social tariff to get in touch with their provider as soon as possible — as switching to these discounted rates could halve their bills overnight.”
After sifting through the UK Government’s latest gender pay gap filings — which UK-based employers with more than 250 employees are obliged to report — it was uncovered that companies like Deliveroo and Checkout.com have pay gaps wider than the UK’s national average.
Specifically, in 15 of the 20 companies — including Revolut and Cazoo — Sifted found that women earned 90p or less for every £1 earned by men. Monzo, Starling Bank, Arrival, and LumiraDx are slightly higher at 90.7p, 90.8p, 92p, and 97.2p respectively, but pay parity is still elusive. Only one company out of the 20 — Octopus Energy — pays its female employees more than its male staff, at £1.06 to £1.
This data doesn’t automatically mean that a female developer, designer, or a woman serving in any other role at one of these tech companies is paid less than a man with the same job title, skills, and experience, however. Instead, the root cause of the gap here is suggested to be the lack of senior women.
The lack of women being employed in more senior (read: higher- and highest-paid roles) is a prominent concern when it comes to gender-related diversity, equity, and inclusion.
In Sifted’s analysis, when it comes to the percentage of women in the highest pay quartile at UK tech companies, Graphcore scored lowest out of the 20 firms, with women filling just one in 20 (5.7%) roles in the highest pay quartile. Octopus Energy was, again, at the other end of the spectrum, with women filling 55.5% roles in the highest pay quartile.
These findings aren’t entirely surprising: Over 2021-2022, and across the UK’s tech industry, 91.1% of companies paid male employees more than female staff overall. Further, only 23.5% of the top-paying jobs in tech were held by women.
Despite sustained cross-sector pushes for tech pay parity, the gender pay gap evidently still remains. In fact, seven of the tech companies analysed by Sifted reported a worse gender pay gap in 2023 compared to 2022.
As Sifted’s above analysis has highlighted — just as many other recent analyses, reports, and studies have done too — successfully tackling the ongoing gender pay gap requires multiple in-tandem solutions, especially in a largely-male industry like tech.
While one of the more frequently recommended suggestions is to hire and promote women into senior positions, increasing female representation in tech and encouraging women’s participation in the industry through programmes, initiatives, and educational improvements have also been advocated by many as solutions to assist with closing the pay gap.
The 20 tech companies analysed by Sifted include: Zopa Bank, Atom Bank, Improbable, Graphcore, Revolut, Deliveroo, Cinch, Checkout.com, CityFibre, Exscientia, Oxford Nanopore, CMR Surgical, Babylon, Immunocore, Cazoo, Monzo, Starling Bank, Arrival, LumiraDx, and Octopus Energy.
Horizon Europe is a European research and development (R&D) funding scheme that was caught in the crossfire of Brexit. While negotiations surrounding the UK’s association with the scheme continue, the Horizon Europe Guarantee fund is being delivered by UKRI to continue to supply UK-based scientific and technological researchers and innovators with financial support in the interim.
The Government has stated that it “hopes negotiations on Horizon Europe will be successful, and that is our preference.” However, the Gov’s substitute programme, dubbed “Pioneer,” has been published today in an attempt to provide confidence and certainty to the UK’s scientific and technological community if talks falter.
The Government has said that the blueprints have been developed with input from researchers, innovators, and businesses, focusing on the themes of talent, end-to-end innovation, global collaboration, and investments in the R&D system.
In terms of how much investment will be set out for Pioneer if enacted, it’s been posited that the alternative programme will receive around £14.6 billion to the end of 2027 to 2028, including the support already provided through the Horizon Guarantee.
Professor Paul Boyle, Chair of the Universities UK Research & Innovation Policy Network, and Vice-Chancellor at the University of Swansea, said the following on Pioneer and the ongoing Horizon Europe negotiations: “We are pleased to see that, with publication of the Pioneer prospectus today, the government has again reiterated its ambition to complete association to Horizon Europe.
“The recent engagements between Secretary of State Michelle Donelan and the EU ambassador last month, and this week’s meetings in Brussels, demonstrate that this is being treated seriously by both parties.
“Agreement is clearly needed on an appropriate cost for the UK’s association given the years that have been missed. And while we remain hopeful that negotiations can proceed swiftly to deliver a positive outcome, it is entirely appropriate that the UK has an alternative plan that can be activated should our association prove impossible to agree in a reasonable timeframe. As such, we are pleased to see that proposals have now been published and that government is inviting feedback.
“Universities UK has been consulted on the development of the Pioneer package, and we will continue to engage constructively in the coming months. Indeed, there are aspects of the package that we would urge the government to consider implementing in addition to the UK’s association to Horizon Europe, as they would further bolster our ability to work globally and to achieve our collective research and innovation ambitions.”
Sir Jim McDonald, the Principal and Vice-chancellor of the University of Strathclyde, and President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, also commented, saying: “The strong preference of the Academy and the wider global research and innovation community has always been for the UK to associate with Horizon Europe.
“The progress indicated by discussions in recent weeks suggests that we are now closer to confirming that agreement. We hope that all parties will work together quickly to reach fair and appropriate terms for the association that reflect the impact of two years of delays. The whole engineering community would celebrate an announcement of continued partnership between the UK and EU.
“Should association prove impossible even at this late stage the information in the prospectus for Pioneer will be helpful to the community in preparing for the measures that would be put in place under those circumstances. The Academy has worked closely with DSIT, our sister National Academies and UKRI to be ready to deliver the Pioneer Discovery elements of that plan.”
The 48-page proposal for Pioneer can be accessed here.
The Chambers’ Quarterly Economic Indicator — which is published in partnership with the Fraser of Allander Institute — has been running since 1990, with the surveys offering snapshots of how Scots businesses are faring amid both national and global economic and sociopolitical change.
In addition to the lack of improvement regarding sales, cashflow, and investment, the first Indicator survey of the year has indicated that many businesses are still struggling among the backdrop of rising costs, high inflation, and a cautious labour market.
Specifically, more firms reported a fall (43%) in cashflow than an increase (31%). Across the survey, the manufacturing sector was the only sector to report growth for cashflow, and not a contraction. Similarly, the services sector was the only sector to report growth in profits.
Concern over inflation also remains high across all firms, and has seen little movement over the quarter, with 82% reporting increased concern from it.
Further, 75% reported increased cost pressures from energy costs, 70% reported increased cost pressures from labour costs — including salaries — and 50% reported increased cost pressures from raw material prices.
In terms of the labour market, recruitment difficulties have seen a slight drop of five percentage points from last quarter down to 47%, but the figure still points to a general cautiousness in the wake of economic turbulence, and the narrow avoidance of a UK recession.
“The beginning of 2023 has seen improvement in the prospects of some sectors of the Scottish economy, in line with recent economic data that has been more positive than previously expected,” said Stephen Leckie, President of the Scottish Chambers of Commerce. But it must be noted that “this comes from a very low bar set by the past few years of constant and seemingly never-ending challenges for business.”
“The survey also indicates that many of the big challenges that faced firms in 2022 are continuing to persist in 2023. Cost pressures continue to rise alongside concern from energy bills, inflation, labour shortages, alongside growing uncertainty in the global economy.
“There is a large in-tray of issues for the new First Minister and his cabinet to work with businesses to address, to help put the Scottish economy back onto a path towards unlocking growth and investment.”
Professor Mairi Spowage, Director at the Fraser of Allander Institute, commented on the Indicator’s results and how they tie in with other research and reports published recently, saying: “The outlook for the UK economy published by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) which accompanied the Spring Budget was significantly more positive than in November.
“Given the uncertainty, and in particular, given the rise in energy bills households and businesses will experience from April, it feels a little premature to be celebrating that the UK has dodged a recession.
“Whilst it may indeed be true that a technical recession will be avoided, it is still going to feel like a difficult time for the economy – with even the optimistic OBR thinking there will be a contraction in growth over 2023.
“So, the overall feeling in the economy seems to be that things are not as bad as we feared a few months ago, but that the bar was pretty low.”
These unsettling stats come from the Bitdefender 2023 Cybersecurity Assessment report, which surveyed over 400 IT and security professionals across the USA, UK, and the European continent, working in large organisations with over 1,000 employees.
The report’s survey was conducted to uncover new cybersecurity challenges, key practices, and concerns that IT and security experts are facing, and to also throw further spotlight on existing issues.
The survey found more than half (52%) of respondents had experienced a data breach or related incident in the last 12 months, with respondents in the USA and UK being the two most affected. 74.7% of USA-based respondents and 51.4% of UK respondents confirmed incidents.
However, 42% of overall respondents had been advised to keep breaches under wraps, despite the regulatory, legislative, and moral obligation to report them.
Specifically, when it comes to geography, 70.7% of respondents in the USA said they were advised to keep breaches hushed, with 54.7% of American respondents acting on what they’ve been told and keeping breaches concealed. For the UK, these stats are 44.3% and 35.7% respectively. The stats then fall further when it comes to respondents in the countries of Italy, Germany, Spain, and France, highlighting both a transatlantic and continental divide.
There’s also statistical differentiation concerning job roles. Just under half (44.6%) of CTOs were told to conceal breaches, in comparison with 38.8% of CIOs, and then 32.3% of junior managers.
The push-and-pull of being advised against reporting breaches despite the moral, regulatory, and legislative reasons for doing so is causing IT professionals apprehension, especially as more laws in the US and Europe regarding cyber breach reporting come into effect.
When responding to the statement “I’m worried about my company facing legal action due to a security breach being handled incorrectly,” 54.3% of overall respondents agreed, with over three-quarters (78.7%) of USA-based respondents agreeing.
Breach concealment aside, the report also underscored some interesting aspects, attitudes, and worries regarding 2023’s threat landscape.
For example, IT and security leaders in the USA are particularly concerned with software vulnerabilities and zero-days (80%), while in the UK, the primary concern is supply-chain attacks (47%).
The ranking of concerns overall are as follows:
Software vulnerabilities and zero-days (53.9%)
Phishing and social engineering (52.2%)
Supply-chain attacks (49%)
Ransomware (48.5%)
Insider threats (36.5%)
Espionage (34.1%)
Privilege escalation (24.1%)
In terms of the most pressing cybersecurity challenges, more than two-in-five (43%) of respondents said extending capabilities across multiple environments — on-premises, cloud, and hybrid — is the greatest challenge they face.
This challenge is tied with complexity of security solutions (43%). Further, not having the security skill set to drive full value came in as a strong second at 36%, pointing to the sector’s deeply felt skills gap.
In the time it took for this feature article to load, hundreds of cryptocurrency transactions will have been processed on the roughly 1,000 blockchain networks used to confirm the movement of different digital coins. And by the time you’ve finished reading, the number — if we were to account for all the world’s blockchain networks, including the most popular, like Ethereum 2.0 — will be exponential.
It would be untrue, then, to suggest that the crypto space was anything but burgeoning. But it would be similarly false to say that, as the sector continues to grow, the broad societal perception of crypto is a wholly positive one. Ever since its relative popularisation in 2009 with the arrival of Bitcoin, crypto has been met with the following common criticisms: that it’s a glorified Ponzi scheme; that it has no intrinsic value; that the processes underpinning crypto is further damaging planet Earth; and that, ultimately, it’s a young person’s venture and too bewildering to be adopted by those outside of tech circles.
One crypto-driven company proving that such catch-all critiques can be unfounded and untrue is The Scotcoin Project. As a not-for-profit Community Interest Company (CIC), The Scotcoin Project goes against the grain of the wider public consensus of what crypto is, what it can be used for, how it’s made, and what a company’s intent for creating its own cryptocurrency could be in the first place. Specifically, Scotcoin (or “SCOT”), its cryptocurrency, funds the Project’s ability to work with myriad Scottish, UK, and worldwide charities and initiatives that are doing important community- and environmentally-focused work.
To discover what compelled The Scotcoin Project to combine the world of crypto with altruism, DIGIT sat down with Temple Melville, The Scotcoin Project’s 74-year-old CEO. We discussed the inspiration behind the organisation’s mission-driven ethos, how it’s directly using cryptocurrency as a tool for social and environmental good, and how other companies, both in Scotland and beyond, can begin to get involved in community- and eco-positive efforts themselves.
The Origins of Scotcoin and The Scotcoin Project CIC
In 2014, amid the lead-up to the Scottish referendum, Derek Nisbet, an IT professional and fintech entrepreneur, created Scotcoin as a potential national currency for which to trade, should Scotland break away from the United Kingdom. However, over time (and after the outcome of the referendum), Nisbet had simultaneously less interest and less time to commit to the running and the growth of Scotcoin.
Enter Temple Melville and David Low; two friends who, between them, had extensive and in-depth experience across myriad business sectors over the years. Inspired by Scotcoin’s untapped potential, the pair approached Nisbet with the mind to buy him out. And in early 2016, Melville and Low officially became the new owners of Scotcoin. The acquisition, which was made for an undisclosed sum, marked the beginning of Scotcoin’s future — and The Scotcoin Project Community Interest Company’s future, too.
“We had a very definite view of what we wanted to do,” Melville told DIGIT. “It was quite clear that not only in Scotland — but across many places — there were needs that people had which were simply not being addressed by the existing system in one way or another. And so, we set out to help where we could, setting up The Scotcoin Project as a Community Interest Company. A CIC has charitable purposes, and you can’t really make any money out of it — that all fit exactly with what we wanted to do.”
In terms of the pair’s goals with The Scotcoin Project, Melville and Low wanted to educate the general public about blockchain technology, digital currencies, and Scotcoin, with Scotcoin being a method for addressing the need for a national digital cryptocurrency, while also being beneficial for Scotland’s economy-at-large as well as its local economies. Moreover, the issues of homelessness, clothes and food waste, and climate change were becoming ever more pressing — areas The Scotcoin Project was keen to help improve and alleviate.
From that point forward, a symbiotic relationship between Scotcoin and The Scotcoin Project was established, with Scotcoin becoming what would drive The Scotcoin Project vehicle to deliver positive change and value.
Growing Scotcoin in Line With the Project’s Values
After the 2016 acquisition, there were several notable events in the following years that accelerated Scotcoin’s growth, and helped the Project to act on its founding mission.
Firstly, in 2018, the Project secured £80,000 in external funding, used to increase awareness of SCOT, and to promote it as both a valuable asset and an emerging means of transaction and method of acquiring in-store and online goods.
Secondly, with crypto’s ongoing, global expansion — and despite its somewhat entrenched broader societal perception — more and more of the Scottish public became aware and active in the crypto sector. This was a nation-wide change Melville witnessed first-hand. As he told DIGIT: “Four or so years ago, when I gave a university lecture, I asked, “Who’s got cryptocurrency? And who knows about blockchain?” At that stage, probably 4 or 5% of the audience said they had crypto, and maybe 1% said they knew about blockchain. However, at my last lecture at the University of Strathclyde, about 80% actually held some form of crypto, and all of them knew about blockchain. That’s a huge turnaround.” In fact, according to research undertaken by UK-based money app Ziglu, around 12% of Scottish respondents bought crypto in 2021, with that rate suggested to increase to 15% over the year. It’s not hard to imagine that figure rose over 2022, and continues to in 2023.
Another important aspect of Scotcoin’s growth to date was the transition to the aforementioned Ethereum 2.0 blockchain. Against the backdrop of expensive running fees, comparatively slow processes, and worries about the reported energy use associated with crypto, a newer, more streamlined, and more environmentally-conscious blockchain solution was required.
Serendipitously, around the same time, a sector-changing development was around the corner: the Ethereum Merge. Essentially, the Merge represented a move away from an outdated proof-of-work system — where myriad computers across a decentralised network confirm which transactions are legitimate, thereby “minting” new coins — to a proof-of-stake system. The proof-of-stake system — where randomly-selected but opted-in validators update the blockchain with the latest verified transactions, instead of energy-intensive miners — has been said to have brought Ethereum’s network power consumption down by around 99.9% (drawing 2,600 megawatt hours per year, as opposed to 23 million megawatt hours per year), and is also faster and more secure to boot.
In response to the advancement — and to better meet its needs — the Project adopted the newly-created system. “We immediately recognised that [Ethereum 2.0] was going to make processes much more eco-friendly, which again fitted with what we wanted to do,” Melville explained. Further, Scotcoin moved to become an ERC20 Ethereum mainnet coin. ERC20 is an Ethereum standard that enables people to issue and implement their own tokens, and any newly-created tokens are interchangeable with other smart contract tokens, too.
Technical upgrades aside, The Scotcoin Project has been engaging with various crypto exchanges since last year to list publicly the tokens, meaning that Scotcoin — or rather, SCOT — could be bought and sold for either fiat currency (e.g., GBP, USD, or Euros) or other cryptocurrencies on the open market. The decision was made to target the millions of Scottish diaspora located across the globe — as well as anyone else with an urge to do good — providing folks with further opportunity to obtain Scotcoin for themselves.
The continued growth of Scotcoin over the years, then, could be best described as measured, intentional, and iterative — traits that inherently separate it from many crypto and blockchain rugpull projects — with the Project team only undertaking growth-related actions that directly aligned with its mission of being an ethical cryptocurrency. And it’s thanks to Scotcoin’s growth that the Project could then implement and collaborate on initiatives that have people and the environment at their heart.
Making a Difference With Scotcoin
For The Scotcoin Project, being actively mission- and ethically-led was imperative from the very beginning. But for the Project’s impact to be meaningful and effective — i.e. not just what seemed good on paper — going about the initiatives and collaborations in a deliberate manner was necessary. “There are around 23,000 cryptocurrencies, currently. And all bar a small handful of them, they’re all a complete waste of time because they’ve been made for people to get rich quick,” Melville said, candidly. “But what we do is we go out, and we use our cryptocurrency directly to help — for example, charities. I mean, you can have cryptocurrency, and you can then sell it and give the money to a charity — or give cryptocurrency to charities — and they’ll plug it into something. But that’s not actually making use of the cryptocurrency; all that’s doing is making use of financial instruments. Our approach is quite different.”
By “quite different,” Melville means valuable partnerships and collaborations with charities and third sector organisations. One particularly notable example is Emmaus, the Glasgow-based homelessness charity helping to house and upskill homeless adults in need of stability, to whom the Project supplied clothes that would’ve otherwise been needlessly burned by the clothing company due to a lack of consumer interest.
“Clothing companies are forever burning clothes,” Melville said. “We found out about a company that had a whole lot — pallets full — of hoodies and tracksuits that were going to be incinerated. So we went to them and said, ‘We will pay you in Scotcoin, we will take these from you, and we will use them,’ which they saw the logic in. We then shipped the goods to Emmaus, and the charity handed the salvaged clothes to lots of people in need of them. That was a win-win from the charity’s point of view, but also from the point of view of the manufacturer; they then didn’t have the cost of burning the clothes, but they also got something for nothing. They could then use the Scotcoin themselves, keep it within their own ecosystem, or give it out as rewards to customers, and so on. It’s a really good system — and really worthwhile.”
When undergoing collaborations like this — where oversupply and waste is redistributed — Melville says that the Project has “preferred” partners it works with to ensure the subsequent impact is targeted and meaningful. As well as the aforementioned Emmaus, the Project has either previously or presently partnered up with: Social Bite, the Scottish social business providing homes, jobs, food, and support to those in need; Eat Up, the Scottish goodwill food charity; and Bobath, the charity whose mission is to improve the lives of people with cerebral palsy, as well as Helpful Hounds, Cerebral Palsy Scotland, and FARE Scotland.
Speaking of FARE Scotland, one of the Project’s most recent collaborations supported the Easterhouse-based grassroots charity, whose work helps improve the lives of disadvantaged communities across Central Scotland. In this instance, the Project donated an assortment of plants, flowers, compost, and other important materials, thereby transforming the charity’s community allotment. To deliver the materials, the Project used its links to BBX — a crypto network that secures excess goods and materials for third sector projects — to pay for the materials with Scotcoin. While some may not perceive the Project’s recent collaboration with FARE and its community allotment to be as impressive as the clothes redistribution for Emmaus, it’s an undeniably well-fitting metaphor for how the ties between the crypto space and the third sector are growing, while also somewhat serving as further proof-of-concept as to how actionable altruistic endeavours can be built around a crypto framework.
The Project’s outwardness — collaborating with external, third sector organisations — doesn’t mean that the Project doesn’t look inward, though: Last year, as part of reducing its own impact on the environment amid climbing global temperatures, the Project achieved carbon neutrality. Specifically, The Scotcoin Project offset 100 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent through investment in a project delivered by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Adaptation Fund, which reduced the emissions of damaging greenhouse gases, thanks to a thermal oxidisation system.
Speaking of offsetting, the Project also recently launched the Scotcoin Carbon Offset initiative, providing Scottish and UK businesses and individuals with a platform to commit to carbon neutrality by offsetting their own yearly carbon consumption via fiat currency or Scotcoin payment. This initiative works similarly to the just-mentioned carbon offsetting project: A payment is taken by the Project and redistributed towards companies, projects, and initiatives that actively work to reduce carbon. And while offsetting itself isn’t the sole answer — rather a part of an intricate equation — it’s another simple way for both individuals and businesses to act.
All businesses — large or small, for-profit or not-for-profit, Scottish or international — have an impact on the local community and the wider environment. For instance, when it comes to the environment alone, and according to statistics from the Office for National Statistics, businesses account for nearly one-fifth (18%) of all UK greenhouse emissions. And many more companies are recognising that actively participating in positive initiatives, projects, and efforts is an important way to offset actions that result in a negative impact.
For the founders, C-suites, and other decision-makers who now feel compelled to get their own companies involved with beneficial initiatives and work to support charities but don’t know where or how to start, Melville has some sage advice to offer.
“First of all, it’s a question of figuring out what you feel you’d like to do, and then focusing on that. There’s a very fine third sector in Scotland, with charities and organisations operating all over. Each company needs to think carefully.” This intentionality regarding determining who or what you’d like to help will better target your business’ philanthropic efforts, and ultimately result in a deeper, more profound impact.
“Secondly, ask what the charities themselves need. Let’s say, for example, you really want to help communities in Inverkeithing. If that’s the case, there are almost inevitably going to be several small charities operating in Inverkeithing. But asking the charities ‘What do you need?’ is critical — it’s the driver. It’s what the Project does; we’re not saying, ‘Here’s this’ or ‘Here’s that’, we say, ‘Give us a list of what you need.’ We find this very helpful because there are certain aspects we can’t aid with, while there are quite a number of things we can. So ask the charities what they want.”
What’s on the Horizon for The Scotcoin Project
The Scotcoin Project’s own third sector work is by no means over. The team of 11 is constantly working on existing projects with partners, while also spinning up new projects and collaborations, so the Project’s mission can continue to be met in new and profound ways.
When asked what Melville would especially like the Project’s philanthropic efforts to continue focusing on — and potentially even ramp up — generally-speaking, he said the issue of homelessness. “In 2019, around 216 people died on the streets of Scotland. I don’t care where you live in the world — people shouldn’t die on the street. That shouldn’t happen, and we should help people off the streets. Personally, I would really love to be the person who can do better for Scotland in terms of homelessness,” Melville told DIGIT.
Whichever initiatives, projects, and collaborations The Scotcoin Project CIC has in store and works on in the future, it’s safe to say they’ll be for the good of the planet and its people. And we’ll be eagerly waiting to see where the Project will distribute Scotcoin and its efforts next.
LBN targets investment in Scottish rural settlements and small towns that would otherwise be unlikely to get access to a gigabit-capable network. The company is currently building networks in the Highlands, Fife, and East Lothian — areas in notable need of fast and reliable broadband coverage. The company also has plans to extend the service into other areas of Scotland in the near-future.
The latest funding is set to support the company with the expansion of its network — which is said to be on target to pass 100,000 rural Scottish premises by the end of 2024. Over £20M was first awarded to LBN by SNIB in 2021 to aid with tackling rural Scotland’s digital inequality.
To deliver fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP), LBN is deploying XGS-PON technology that is billed to offer rural residents symmetrical upload and download connection speeds of up to 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps).
“This new funding from the Bank takes our overall investment capacity for the year ahead up to £50m,” said Gavin Rodgers, CEO of Lothian Broadband Networks, on the news of the funding.
“This further support from the Bank highlights our effectiveness at working with our partners in government and local communities to transform connectivity in rural Scotland.”
Scottish National Bank’s Executive Director, Nicola Douglas, also commented, saying: “Ultrafast broadband has a transforming impact, boosting economic growth, reducing inequalities, and helping education.
“Our investment in LBN is already making a difference for both rural businesses and homes and by supporting this state-of-the-art fibre roll out we are future
proofing the network.”
Digital exclusion and inequality, according to research referenced by the Scottish Government’s Connecting Scotland programme, has numerous profound implications for rural residents, not least when it comes to finances and career opportunities.
Relatedly, just two months ago, DIGIT reported on the news that by 2024, it’ll be possible to access broadband speeds of 100 Megabytes per second (Mbps) on the moon — meaning it’ll receive better speeds than half of all UK properties.
The “MentorMatch” platform is being developed amid the myriad recent reports and surveys — not least the Scottish Government-backed Stewart Report — which highlight the various challenges that women in Scotland, the UK, and across the wider world face when establishing and progressing a career in entrepreneurship.
Effective mentorship is often cited as one part of the equation for helping women to thrive as business owners and leaders, as it can facilitate valuable learning opportunities and knowledge exchange.
Analysis conducted alongside Digital Boost has found that 53% of female business owners in Scotland feel a lack of opportunities to be mentored has held them back from advancing their careers. Further, 82% of female business leaders are likely to ask for mentoring support, illustrating a demand for effective mentoring.
RBS’ online MentorMatch platform is billed to streamline the process for mentors and mentees to connect — which can often be difficult — and will also attempt to break down the formality surrounding mentoring. The aforementioned analysis shows these are pain points, as 49% of women reported that finding a mentor who aligns with their needs is too difficult, and that 47% of female business leaders feel that mentoring is too formal a process.
As an additional offering, the digital matchmaking platform is also set to provide guidance targeting specific business challenges.
An in-person launch event for MentorMatch will be taking place in Glasgow later this month.
“Royal Bank of Scotland has a long and proud tradition of supporting women in business,” said Judith Cruickshank, Chair of the Scotland Board at Royal Bank of Scotland.
“Today’s launch will provide another important offering within our solutions to empower women to unleash their full potential and achieve their goals.
“We are deeply committed to Scotland and its vibrant business community. When one of us succeeds, we all do. We recognise the unique challenges that women in Scotland face, and we are determined to be part of the solution, helping to build a more equitable, prosperous, and sustainable future for Scotland.”
Digital Boost’s Managing Director, Karen Licurse, also commented, saying: “We know that mentorship has the power to unlock the potential of countless women in business, helping them to grow and ultimately, thrive. But the reality is that old school approaches to mentorship can be outdated, and often not suitable to the modern workforce.
“Our purpose is simple – we want to strip mentorship back to its core and easily connect people to the personalised support they need, while also encouraging more people to become mentors. This new platform will reshape what mentoring means to Scotland’s female business community and Royal Bank of Scotland, with its marked experience of supporting women in enterprise, is the perfect partner to make it happen.”
Last year, the Rose Review, a report on female entrepreneurship conducted by Alison Rose, CEO of NatWest group, found that a potential £250 billion of new value could be added to the UK economy if women started and scaled new businesses at the same rate as men.
These concerning findings were just some of the insights gleaned from Sophos’ latest commissioned research, The State of Cybersecurity 2023: The Business Impact of Adversaries, which was conducted by tech market research company Vanson Bourne at the beginning of this year.
The survey posed a series of cybersecurity-related questions to a pool of around 3,000 leaders responsible for IT and cybersecurity efforts across small-, medium-, and large-sized companies over 14 different countries.
Breaking down the fact that 93% of respondents are finding threat hunting and resolution difficult, the respondents rated at least one of the following as “challenging”:
Identifying the root cause of the incident (75% find challenging)
Identifying signals from noise (71%)
Prioritising which signals/alerts to investigate (71%)
Getting sufficient data to properly identify a malicious or benign signal (71%)
Remediating malicious alerts or incidents in a timely manner (71%)
Keeping accurate records of investigations (68%)
Further, the research uncovered that companies at both ends of the spectrum — smaller companies with less than $10 million USD in annual revenue, and large companies with revenue over $5 billion — are the most likely orgs to have difficulties with security operations tasks.
Sophos points to a number of reasons that underpin why, exactly, firms are finding the threat hunting process arduous, including: the shortage of in-house cybersecurity expertise and skills prompted by the current cybersecurity skills gap; an overwhelming volume of alerts coming through; and too much time being spent on incident response, rendering firms unable to keep up with the ongoing threat and reality of security attacks and issues.
Speaking of which, Sophos highlighted that the rate at which adversaries are acting is faster than organisations can keep up with. “The study revealed that today’s reality is a two-speed cybersecurity system with adversaries and defenders moving at different speeds,” wrote the study’s authors. “Through automation, cybercrime ‘as-a-service’ models, stealthy impersonation, and adaptation, adversaries are accelerating and can now execute a wide range of sophisticated attacks at scale.”
The pressure of potential threats is felt deeply, according to the research’s findings. 57% of respondents said that they lose sleep thinking about the impact of being hit by a cyber-attack, while 52% of respondents said they believe cyber-threats are now too advanced for their organisation to deal with on their own.
In terms of how potential threats are ranked, the respondents said the following are a top concern:
Data exfiltration (41%)
Phishing (40%)
Ransomware (35%)
Cyber extortion (33%)
Denial of Service attacks (32%)
Business email compromise (31%)
Active adversaries (30%)
Mobile malware (30%)
Cryptominers (22%)
Wipers (16%)
So that firms can effectively move ahead of adversaries, the report lays out the following suggestions: “Firstly, organizations need to set up an incident response process that can scale, achieved through minimizing the attack surface and the volume of alerts that require attention, and optimizing response time by leveraging specialist services.”
Secondly, “they need to implement adaptive defenses that automatically adjust to the situation. This allows them to slow down adversaries and buy defenders time to respond.”
Lastly, “they also need to set up a virtuous cycle that combines technology and human expertise to turbo-charge defenses, enabling an increase in speed, efficacy, and impact. Together they accelerate the defender flywheel, enabling them to pull ahead.”
However, as the statistics show, the closing of the cybersecurity skills gap would also help to alleviate the pressure in the ongoing race between defenders and adversaries.
The move to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection — a form of bankruptcy which generally allows for the reorganisation of a business’ affairs, assets, and debts — was made “in order to effectuate a sale of the business,” according to a statement published by the company.
To facilitate and fund the sale process and also allow the business to keep operating while a buyer is sought, Virgin Investments Limited is supplying Virgin Orbit with $31.6 million USD in debtor-in-possession financing.
“The Company is focused on a swift conclusion to its sale process in order to provide clarity on the future of the Company to its customers, vendors, and employees,” the statement also read. “In the interim, Virgin Orbit will continue operating in the ordinary course as a “debtor-in-possession” under the jurisdiction of the bankruptcy court and in accordance with the applicable provisions of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.”
On the announcement of the bankruptcy filing, Virgin Orbit’s CEO, Dan Hart, said: “While we have taken great efforts to address our financial position and secure additional financing, we ultimately must do what is best for the business.
“We believe that the cutting-edge launch technology that this team has created will have wide appeal to buyers as we continue in the process to sell the Company.
“At this stage, we believe that the Chapter 11 process represents the best path forward to identify and finalize an efficient and value-maximizing sale.”
The news of bankruptcy is the latest in a series of adverse events for the rocket company, which launches satellite-containing rockets from underneath modified Boeing 474 planes.
Just days ago, DIGIT reported on the news that Virgin Orbit had laid off about 85% of its staff — totalling around 675 jobs, leaving roughly 100 staff in place.
Before that, the company initiated a “company-wide operational pause” in March, consequently placing staff on furlough.
In January, the company’s high-profile satellite launch failure at Spaceport Cornwall — which was supposed to be a historic moment for the UK, representing the first time a satellite space mission had been launched from UK soil — sent its stock price into collapse.
However, the Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing could help to turn Virgin Orbit’s free fall around — should a buyer be found.
The funding round was led by Archangels, the Edinburgh-based, long-running business angel syndicate, with additional participation from the University of Edinburgh’s Old College Capital, St. Andrews-based Eos Advisory, and Hanna Capital SEZC.
The in-development Lifeglov is a soft robotic glove tailored towards patients who’ve lost upper limb mobility and movement, particularly patients who’ve had a stroke. The glove is being built to aid with the opening and closing strength of the hand, and to also report key metrics concerning the patient’s rehabilitative progress.
The glove’s initial application is in the upper limb rehabilitation market, but it is anticipated that the technology will have a range of clinical applications, including lower limb.
A Digital Therapy Platform is set to accompany the glove, providing patients with exercises to rebuild strength and mobility.
With the sizable sum, Bioliberty aims to complete the development of the glove’s trial product, and finalise the development of the Digital Therapy Platform. The funding is also anticipated to fund the business through obtaining FDA approval, and early commercial engagement with U.S. rehabilitation clinics.
Just last week, DIGIT reported that Rowan Armstrong, the CEO of Bioliberty, had been announced as one of the 14 Scottish entrepreneurs who will travel to New York as part of Foras’ excursion programme, providing the entrepreneurs with the opportunity to pitch their businesses to U.S. investors.
Commenting on the £2.2m, Archangels-led funding, Armstrong said: “Our aim at Bioliberty is to empower every human to live a longer independent life by providing assistive robotics and rehabilitative technologies.
“The Lifeglov is a first step on this journey and the funding announced today will allow us to complete its development, along with our software platform, while preparing the runway for our US sales push.
“We’re confident in our technology and excited by the benefits it can deliver for both patients and occupational therapists.”
Niki McKenzie, Joint Managing Director at Archangels, also said: “Bioliberty has developed a highly effective solution for helping patients with hand weakness, with the potential to improve the quality of life for millions worldwide.
“We believe its technology has far-reaching benefits beyond this first application, providing the business with an excellent opportunity to grow quickly from its base here in Scotland.
“Archangels is excited to be supporting the team as they finalise what we hope will be the first of many products and start scaling up their sales activity.”
“Security isn’t something that’s only meant for the few,” said Gwen Diagram with a resolute conviction, as she delivered her compelling keynote to over 300 attendees at DIGIT’s Scot-Secure 2023 event in Edinburgh. “Security is something that most people in tech — and outside of tech, too — want to learn about; it’s a mystery to most people.”
The need for sufficient cybersecurity knowledge and awareness is abundantly clear in the contemporary workplace: without it, all staff — at all levels — are susceptible to further facilitating attacks and issues. For instance, according to research undertaken by telecoms giant Verizon in 2022, the human element is the root cause of 82% of data breaches.
Meanwhile, for those working in tech teams themselves, gaining a deeper understanding and working knowledge of security will only ever help them in their own work — whether they’re engineers, developers, or serving in another role.
But what can you — as a founder, a CTO, or just as somebody passionate about bolstering your business’ cyber defences — do to help ensure cybersecurity is better appreciated and understood in your organisation?
Diagram, who’s Head of Engineering at Glean, the personal study tool, is a staunch advocate for anybody interested to deliver cybersecurity workshops themselves — and it’s actually easier to do so than one might think. In her keynote, Diagram herself was wholly transparent in the fact that her expertise largely lies elsewhere — including testing — but that doesn’t stop her from delivering an array of impactful security workshops, and it shouldn’t stop you either. In fact, by delivering cybersecurity-focused workshops at previous organisations like Sky, it’s actually helped Diagram to upskill her own cybersecurity know-how.
Here’s a selection of some of Diagram’s workshop suggestions, as part of her Bringing the Party to Cybersecurity keynote. (And — to clarify — the party? It’s everybody else that you work with.)
Laying the Groundwork for Effective Cybersecurity Workshops
First of all, and before digging into some of the actual workshops you can facilitate, a word of advice: Don’t try creating — and then delivering — cybersecurity workshops on your own. “You can totally do it on your own, but it’s a really great opportunity to train people up,” Diagram suggested.
If you’re sure of your own cybersecurity skills, you can pull in folks to help out, thereby upskilling them. But if you’re underconfident, you can lean on the expertise of your more knowledgeable colleagues. “Some of the people I’ve gotten involved in organising and running these workshops include proper security specialists — who were amazing because they helped me so much — to architects, compliance officers, and even IoT support.”
Once you’ve landed on who’s involved with the organising of the workshop, it’s then time to consider how the workshop is going to take shape and be delivered.
To make the delivery of cybersecurity workshops accessible by and to all people, Diagram’s workshop suggestions have “really minimal setup — and most importantly, for me, required minimal knowledge of the systems at hand, while also providing people with information about how they can improve in the future.”
Here are some (read: a non-exhaustive list) of the workshop ideas she mentioned.
Juice Shop
Diagram’s first suggestion was to have a workshop oriented around Juice Shop — the “modern and sophisticated insecure web application” which “contains a vast number of hacking challenges of varying difficulty where the user is supposed to exploit the underlying vulnerabilities,” the OWASP Foundation’s website says.
“I cannot express how useful this application is,” Diagram said, authoritatively. “What’s really good about Juice Shop is it’s free and open source, and is really, really easy to install — you can install it from source, as a package, or as a Docker image. It has easy-to-follow instructions, so if there’s someone who’s a little bit less technical, they’ll still be able to do it,” she said.
Further, “it’s self-contained, so it’s not dangerous — which is very important. And it’s self-healing as well, so if you totally trash it, it’s okay; it’ll recover. Also, it has gamification, which is how you get people really excited about it. You can measure progress and check off what vulnerabilities people have found.”
Diagram also stated that Juice Shop is valuable to run at companies where folks are working on several different applications. “I ran this at Sky, and it was really useful because I had people attend from multiple different departments that worked on completely different applications,” she noted.
However, Juice Shop not being application-specific also results in a notable downside. “It’s really fun, and it gives people some skills in being able to hack systems, but often not in the language that people are actually writing in,” Diagram added.
War Games
War games, in this context, are games where competitors are challenged to exploit or defend a vulnerability in an application or system, or gain entry to or prevent access to it.
“This is where I got a compliance officer and IT support engineer involved,” Diagram prefaced, again referring to the fact that creating and delivering impactful cybersecurity workshops often necessitates collaboration. In terms of how the war game was framed, “one of our suppliers had a security breach, and we had the people that came to the workshop pretend that they were dealing with an incident,” Diagram said.
Diagram reflected that war game cybersecurity workshops are particularly good for building deeper bonds with people outside of engineering.
However, she advocates for being really intentional and thoughtful about the scenarios you drop attendees in — a lesson Diagram learned first-hand. “Some of the engineers decided that they didn’t really need to do much about the incident besides telling our customers and resetting passwords if needed, because I had set it up as a supplier. So you might have a better idea for a war game.”
The Elevation of Privilege Card Game
Designed by Adam Shostack and sold by Agile Stationary, Elevation of Privilege is a bespoke card game used to introduce developers to threat modelling — a process where vulnerabilities or a lack of safeguards are identified and assessed, and where remediation methods are then prioritised.
Diagram mentioned that running the game is particularly useful — and “works so much better” — on a real application. “In the past, I’ve run this game using Juice Shop as the software under attack,” she added.
When it comes to Elevation of Privilege’s advantages, Diagram said that it’s a “really fun way for people to think about the application from a great number of threats. When I ran [Elevation of Privilege] on a real application, we found some pretty severe privacy issues […] we wouldn’t have realised without playing this game.”
Cons-wise, some initial clueing-up on how Hearts, the card game, works may be needed — Elevation of Privilege runs on a similar concept to Hearts. Further, “running the game is hard to do at first — you need to practise. […] It’s not the easiest, but it is really useful once you get it to work.”
Also, you’ll want to make sure the deck you buy contains the threat record cards to more effectively tally up the scores, among other benefits. Finally, “there are some really .NET-specific issues in [Elevation of Privilege], and they’re just not relevant to a lot of applications.”
OWASP ZAP
OWASP Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP) is an open-source web application security scanner, used to identify security vulnerabilities during development and testing.
“OWASP ZAP — it’s really cool, but it’s pretty meaty,” Diagram acknowledged. It’s used by experienced penetration testers to perform security testing, perhaps highlighting a certain complexity.
Considering this, if you’re interested in delivering a workshop oriented around ZAP, this is one of the moments where leaning on the expertise of security experts in your team or wider circle comes in handy. “It’s pretty difficult to run a workshop when you don’t know what you’re doing with the error messages,” Diagram noted. “So I got my security specialists to help, which helped me a lot. […] Getting someone who knows what they’re talking about here is really, really useful.”
In terms of pros, “it’s low-hanging fruit using Spider with OWASP ZAP,” Diagram said. Spider is a ZAP addon and tool that’s used to automatically discover new URLs. To boot, “it’s really easy to install.”
However, “to actually use OWASP ZAP properly, you need to use it quite a bit — it’s fast,” Diagram mentioned.
“Threat modelling is one of the most important things you can do for your application,” stated Diagram, as she began to go deep into the topic of threat modelling, and how to host a cybersecurity workshop around it.
“There are a couple of ways that you can handle [threat modelling workshops]. Either, you can provide the data flow diagrams up front, or you can hold a longer workshop for people to actually consider the data flow models within the application under test. This is a really good opportunity to get your architects involved as they should have a really good understanding of how data moves throughout the application,” Diagram advised.
To really maximise the learning experience and value for workshop attendees, factoring in the evolved STRIDE framework, STRIPED (Spoofing, Tampering, Repudiation, Information disclosure, Privacy, Elevation of privilege, and Denial of service) into your threat modelling-focused workshop is key.
On delivering a threat modelling-oriented workshop, Diagram said: “One of the things that I’ve really loved doing with threat modelling is using personas. […] It’s a great way for people to get in the minds of attackers.”
Speaking to the advantageous elements of such a workshop, Diagram explained: “Some of the pros of threat modelling is that it gives people a way better understanding of the application that they’re working with. It creates a different point of view for people to understand how people could actually attack their application.”
That said, “it’s a lot of work to set this up.” Similarly, one of the other negatives Diagram called out is that “you’ll also need to explain a lot of things to people before getting started, such as STRIPED and personas.” But, Diagram advocates to push through. “I think the cons are worth it though, as it’s definitely one of the most useful workshops that you can create.”
Cybersecurity Is For Everyone
Diagram’s keynote was as informative as it was enthusiastic; and from a vantage point at the back of the Biosphere hall at Edinburgh’s Dynamic Earth, it was undeniably noticeable just how many folks — both cybersecurity experts and those newer to the sector — were enjoying her accessible guide to hosting cybersecurity workshops.
As the talk began to wrap up, Diagram stated: “Overall learnings for this: People want to learn more about security. These [cybersecurity workshops] are the most successful workshops I have ever run, and I would highly recommend running them.”
But what if you’re now highly invested in running cybersecurity workshops, but too time-strapped? Diagram suggests that you “find some loudmouth that likes running workshops,” she said, smiling. “If there’s someone like me at your company, grab them and convince them that running security workshops is great and you’ll support them. […] You can make it as difficult or easy to run as possible. […] Give it a go.”
Ultimately, Diagram’s keynote wasn’t just a succinct, smart lesson in how to create and deliver impactful cybersecurity workshops to groups: it was more than that. By opening up the possibility to attendees that anybody can deliver — and attend — useful cybersecurity workshops, Diagram is inadvertently helping to usher in the next wave of cybersecurity professionals, all while aiding with the upskilling of a range of folks, and further demystifying cybersecurity in general.
Security, indeed, isn’t something that’s only meant for the few.
The news, which was broken by CNBC, comes just weeks after Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart had told employees Orbit was “initiating a company-wide operational pause,” placing them on furlough.
According to the company’s SEC filing, the move to cut around 675 jobs across the company was made “in order to reduce expenses in light of the company’s inability to secure meaningful funding.” This leaves about 100 jobs still in place.
The major workforce reduction — which is set to be “substantially complete” by 3 April, according to the filing — will incur costs of around $15 million USD, which is equivalent to just over £12 million.
Breaking that down, the sum represents around $8.8m (£7m~) in employee severance payments and benefits costs, and approximately $6.5m (£5m~) in costs related to outplacement services and WARN Act exposure. The WARN Act is a U.S. labour law requiring employers to give 60 days notice of layoffs due to closures or mass layoffs.
“Unfortunately, we’ve not been able to secure the funding to provide a clear path for this company. We have no choice but to implement immediate, dramatic and extremely painful changes,” said Dan Hart, according to audio obtained by CNBC.
Virgin Orbit and the UK space industry: A shaky past, present, and future
Virgin Orbit was founded in Long Beach, California, in 2017, as a spinoff of Branson’s space tourism venture, Virgin Galactic. Orbit’s flagship LauncherOne rocket — which was previously a Galactic project — has launched six flights since 2020, with two being failures.
The last failure, which happened in Cornwall on January 9 this year, was supposed to be a historic moment for the UK, representing the first time a satellite space mission had been launched from UK soil. (Orbit’s prior launches took place at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California.) However, the rocket that had been carrying the satellites suffered a technical “anomaly” and failed to reach orbit, thwarting the mission.
The failure to launch the rocket and its satellites was a blow to the UK’s efforts in trying to establish itself as a space leader, with the UK space industry investing a lot of hope into its success.
It was a particular blow for the UK Space Agency, who contributed money to the project that brought the launch over to the UK. Now, considering the funding difficulties that Orbit is currently facing, it’s not known whether Orbit will launch a rocket again, and let alone from Cornwall.
The UK’s space industry is still holding out some hope, however. In Scotland, the Shetland-located SaxaVord Spaceport, and the Sutherland Spaceport in the north Highlands, are working towards their own vertical rocket launches, with both vying to be successful in doing what Orbit couldn’t in Cornwall.
This year, fintech firms are being challenged to pitch impactful solutions to help pension customers become better engaged with their investments, especially regarding environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing. Whoever wins the Forum will then go on to implement their solution for Standard Life and its three million plus customers.
In terms of process — and much like last year — fintechs will present ideas and solutions to an array of senior leaders from Standard Life and the Phoenix Group. Shortlisted innovators will then get the opportunity to work with a Standard Life mentor on their proposal, before a partnership is offered by Standard Life to the winning fintech firm.
Last year’s Innovation Forum was won by Behavioural Finance — an Edinburgh-based firm utilising psychometric testing to help people understand how their relationship with money is impacted by their personality. Standard Life is set to introduce Behavioural Finance’s wealth personality test to select customers, with aims to then expand the offering to more customers later in the year.
Fintech firms interested in taking part can click this link to apply.
“This is a fantastic opportunity for Standard Life to connect with creative thinkers to enhance our proposition development and better support customers to engage with their investments and understand the impact they have on the world,” said Colin Williams, Standard Life’s Managing Director, Pensions and Savings.
“This is key to our Group’s wider social purpose and sustainability strategy and follows the transition of £15bn of workplace assets to our new sustainable default fund.
“We are looking forward to hearing from innovators from across the FinTech Scotland, TCS COINTM and broader start-up community.”
Nicola Anderson, Fintech Scotland Chief Executive, also commented, saying: “We’re delighted to be partnering with Standard Life and Phoenix Group for a second year in a row to bring innovation and better outcomes to its customers.
“The first iteration of their Innovation Forum in 2022 was a real success and we’re very excited to see Standard Life’s plans for integrating the technology from Behavioural Finance into customers’ journeys.
“This year, they’ve set themselves an even bigger challenge as they’re looking to bring more innovation to ESG investing. Customer outcomes are directly linked to environmental and social issues, and vice versa – bringing this relationship to life is vital as we move towards a net zero future.
“At FinTech Scotland we identified Climate as one of the 4 key areas of focus in our Research and Innovation Roadmap and this innovation challenge will help us achieve our goal to move towards greener finance and have the sector contribute to the net zero agenda.”
This finding is just one of the many insights gleaned from Ofcom’s recent annual research regarding children’s and teen’s online lives, with the 2023 study going in-depth into areas such as their digital content consumption and interaction.
The trend of children consuming more professionalised, polished, commercial content was pinpointed in last year’s study; in 2023, however, it’s much more noticeable. “This year, this trend has become more pronounced. The content that children were consuming on their social media feeds was often produced for commercial purposes by companies or influencers, or appeared to be pursuing commercial goals, if not actually generating revenue,” the report’s authors wrote.
“This meant that although some of the younger children in the sample saw some content from other children in less polished formats, most of the children’s social media feeds were saturated with ‘professionalised’ content from people they did not know.”
Due to the rise of professionalised and carefully-considered content from countless digital content creators, many of the children interviewed feel hesitant, self-conscious, and concerned about posting on social media themselves, in fear of judgement or embarrassment.
This has then resulted in children being even more careful about posting content publicly in 2023, preferring to restrict and limit the viewability of what they do post, keeping content private or using specific, close friends-only accounts to share within tight-knit circles. Statistically-speaking, children are less likely to post their own videos on social media (32%) than watch them (96%).
The proliferation of professionalised content has also had a knock-on effect when it comes to how much — or rather, how little — content from friends they’re seeing.
As the report’s authors wrote: “The children were seeing less content produced by people they knew on their social media feeds this year than in previous waves of research. And when they did see posts from their friends, they interacted with them less than they had done formerly, restricting themselves to liking their friends’ posts or occasionally leaving a comment. As described in ‘How were the children interacting online’, social media feeds had become less of a place for the children to socialise and more of a platform where they consumed content, some more actively than others.”
Where are children going to watch content in 2023?
Relatedly, the study also found — perhaps unsurprisingly — that TikTok wasn’t only the social media app of choice of children, but that app is also essentially a portal for consumption, as opposed to interaction.
“For the majority of the children who had TikTok on their personal devices, this was the app they used more than any other, with only one exception. TikTok was mainly used for entertainment. The children enjoyed consuming short-form content served on their For You page, which typically lasted up to one minute. However, while the children watched a lot of content on TikTok, they rarely created or shared self-produced content themselves,” wrote the report’s authors.
Similarly, the study found that short-form content was often viewed by children on other platforms and their sister platforms and products, like YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels. YouTube itself was often used to watch longer-form content by nearly all of the children interviewed, with the content typically ranging from five to 30 minutes in length.
What’s keeping children engaged?
Children continue to be drawn to “dramatic” social media content that’s been intentionally created to drive and keep the attention of the viewer engaged, relying on conflict, controversy, gossip, and high stakes to do so. “Commentary” and “reaction” videos continue to appeal to children, reinforcing the trend of consumption over interaction.
According to the report, this year also saw the rise of “split-screening”: where the viewer can watch more than one short-form video at a time as part of a single post, with the videos sometimes being completely unrelated. Children previously reported to Ofcom that they had difficulties paying attention to one screen-based activity at a time.
The Children’s Media Lives 2023 study can be read in full here.
This new partnership between The Data Lab and the Tay Cities Digital Skills Project — funded by the Scottish Government — aims to address the Scottish digital skills gap, help the country’s tech industry to be more diverse, and prepare participants for jobs at increasingly digitised, automated, and data-driven workplaces.
Before its extension to the Tay Cities region, Data Lab’s Data Skills for Work Programme previously upskilled more than 500 learners (53% of whom identify as women, and 32% as an ethnic minority) in Edinburgh, delivering training in coding, data analytics, and data visualisation.
Further and Higher education institutions and other training providers based in Dundee, Angus, North East Fife, and Perth & Kinross can apply for up to £10,000 to facilitate data training courses for a minimum of 20 participants each. Courses can be delivered multiple times (and so applicants can apply to deliver more than one course), but the courses must be completed by 30 September 2023.
The data courses will be free for learners who earn less than £24,000 per year, are not already in training, or belong to one of the following groups: women, people with a disability, people from a minority ethnic background, and neurodivergent individuals.
“We are calling on providers who can offer training in crucial data skills and capabilities, including data analytics, data ethics and governance, coding, Artificial Intelligence, machine learning skills and data engineering,” said Anna Ashton Scott, Programme Manager for Professional Development at The Data Lab.
“We are also particularly interested in proposals that align with priority industry sectors for the region, which include engineering, manufacturing, tourism, food and drink.”
Gordon Mole, Head of Business and Employability at Fife Council, who are the lead for the Tay Cities Digital Skills Project, added: “Data skills are essential for everyone’s job now. This proposal gives training providers in the Tay Cities region the opportunity to deliver new skills to residents, helping them thrive and prosper as we look to the future of work.”
Alison Muckersie, Programme Director for Data-Driven Innovation Skills Gateway at the University of Edinburgh, also commented, saying: “We are delighted to be extending our successful programme to work alongside the Tay Cities team. By sharing the learnings across city region deal partnerships, we ensure the efficient and effective use of resources and help accelerate the implementation of successful programmes tested at a regional level but with the potential for national impact.”
Training providers interested in applying can do so here. Applications close at 5pm on Friday 28 April, and funding decisions are set to be made by 12 May.
The 40-page strategy document, which can be read in full here, sets out the government’s plans to facilitate greater use of data in the transport sector, improve how people access, use, and get value from such data, and to drive innovation in the sector so that better services are delivered for passengers travelling in the UK.
The bettered sharing, obtaining, and use of transport data can theoretically lead to improved connectivity between various forms of public transport, and support the development, continuation, and improvement of journey-planning apps and sites and the services they offer.
The strategy document called attention to some of the data-related barriers currently preventing wider innovation in this space. The barriers include: a difficulty in data discoverability; a lack of incentives around companies making data available; and a lack of leadership in transport data, among several others.
To overcome such barriers, there are five key ambitions for the UK government — and the Department for Transport more specifically — moving forward: Improving data sharing to benefit transport users; promoting data standards; improving data skills in the workforce; ensuring appropriate governance and communication with the sector; and providing leadership and support for the sector.
To make progress on the first key ambition of improving data sharing, a pilot for a new data catalogue — ‘Find Transport Data’ — is being launched, in a bid to help simplify and streamline transport data access and use for people, namely innovators and researchers. ‘Find Transport Data’ is an addition to other UK government initiatives for third-party transport data sharing, including Bus Open Data Service (BODS) and the upcoming Rail Data Marketplace.
On the new strategy, Transport Technology Minister Jesse Norman commented, saying: “Better use of transport data will help to improve journeys for travellers, tackle climate change and grow the economy.
“The Transport Data Strategy sets out the government’s vision in this area, creating the right framework for the market to innovate and transport users to benefit.”
Julie Williams, Chief Executive of travel-planning site Traveline UK, also said: “We’re delighted to see the publication of the Transport Data Strategy, which will encourage the sharing of high-quality open transport data towards giving passengers a more informed choice about how they travel, and which will provide a framework within which innovative apps and services are free to develop and grow.”
The collaboration between the VR Hive and Redhill High School — an independent, co-ed school in West Wales — aims to address the growing need for effective mental health interventions for children and adolescents. Arisaig Isle, an immersive VR environment, combined with the support of Verbee, an AI coach companion, offers the potential for children to manage their anxiety in a safe space.
Arisaig Isle — which has been developed with input from mental health professionals and educators — provides a range of customisable experiences, allowing students to engage in therapeutic activities linked to STEM and PSHE outcomes that foster emotional well-being and relaxation.
Meanwhile, the Verbee AI coach companion utilises artificial intelligence technology to interact with users, providing personalised guidance and support. Verbee is designed to be a responsive, empathetic companion that assists children in developing healthy coping strategies — especially regarding General Anxiety Disorder — and building resilience.
Together, Redhill and the VR Hive will work closely during the project’s testing phase, with the school providing feedback to help refine and better the user experience.
The successful implementation of this initiative has the potential to improve mental health support for young people.
“Collaborating with leaders in the educational sector is critical to developing the best solution for the challenges being faced by children today, which is why we are excited to be working with a sector-leading school like Redhill,” said Anne Widdop, the founder of The VR Hive, on the partnership.
Mr Alun Millington, Headteacher and Director of Redhill High School, also commented, saying: “We are thrilled to partner with the VR Hive in this groundbreaking project. Mental health is a top priority for us, and we believe that incorporating technology, like Verbee and the immersive VR environment, into our support system will make a substantial difference in the lives of our students.”
This new partnership is the latest development in the VR Hive using virtual reality in a bid to help tackle a range of challenges. At the end of 2021, DIGIT reported on the VR Hive’s Planet Pollinate game, which Widdop positioned as a way to make learning experiences more immersive.
The 2023 finalists — previously covered by DIGIT — were chosen by a panel of judges from across the business support ecosystem. Alongside championing collaborations that demonstrate innovation, impact, and transformation, the Awards also aim to recognise the people contributing to valuable knowledge exchange.
The winners of this year’s Awards are:
Innovation of the Year (sponsored by HGF Ltd) Sustainable Thinking Scotland CIC and University of the Highlands and Islands for the optimisation of biochar; a stable form of carbon obtained from baking waste wood. This biochar assists in tackling nutrient pollution, preventing toxic, algal blooms, whilst improving water quality, filtering algae, reducing particulates in water, and providing a carbon biochar that can be re-used on land as a slow-release fertiliser.
Innovator of the Future (sponsored by SCI Scotland Group)
Joint winners: Ed Blissitt, Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) Associate from the University of Aberdeen, who collaborated with Motive Offshore Group Ltd on the development of a novel ‘digital winch’ technology that integrated sensors and IT hardware into existing equipment.
As well as the winners, Dr Shu Yang, KTP Associate from the University of the West of Scotland, was Highly Commended for collaborating with Consult Lift Services to embed leadership and management skills alongside modern business systems and processes.
Knowledge Exchange Champion
Professor Naeem Ramzan, University of the West of Scotland, is an international scientist, engineer, and innovator in artificial intelligence and multimedia processing. He actively supports knowledge exchange projects from grassroots level through to providing strategic insights for industry thought-leaders.
Knowledge Exchange Heroes (sponsored by PraxisAuril)
University of the West of Scotland KTP Centre for delivering business, societal, and environmental impact — as well as propelling the careers of the next generation of business leaders in the UK and internationally through a culture of support, recognition, and excellence in customer service.
Making a Social Difference (sponsored by CEIS) Child Rights Coalition Asia, Terre des hommes and other partners with the University of Strathclyde’s Institute for Inspiring Children’s Futures for developing the COVID 4P (Protection, Provision, Participation, Prevention) Log for Children’s Wellbeing in urgent response to the rapidly developing pandemic emergency and the adverse implications for children’s rights worldwide.
Multiparty Collaboration The Industrial Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research in Digital Diagnostics (iCAIRD) comprising nearly 40 partners from across industry, including the NHS and the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews, and Aberdeen. With twin tracks in radiology and pathology, iCAIRD’s programme of work is establishing the infrastructure and environment required to support development, validation, and deployment of AI technologies for use in healthcare.
Powerful Partnership The University of Glasgow and National Nuclear Laboratory for pioneering research in the field of muography, using natural radiation produced in the upper atmosphere to shed unique light on the contents of shielded nuclear waste containers.
“Today’s awards showcase the impactful collaborations between businesses and the academic community and their role in translating Scotland’s world-class research into knowledge that makes Impact,” said Mr Ivan McKee, Minister for Business, Trade, Tourism and Enterprise, on the announcement of the winners.
“Bringing together Scotland’s businesses with the knowledge, expertise and networks of our research community is central to achieving the ambitions of the Scottish Government’s National Strategy for Economic Transformation and our upcoming Innovation Strategy, both in creating the inventions and innovations of the future, and in supporting translation of these into impact and opportunity.”
Professor Andrea Nolan, Chair of the Interface Strategic Board and Principal and Vice Chancellor of Edinburgh Napier University, also commented, saying: “The annual flagship awards event for business-academic partnerships have gone from strength to strength since launching eight years ago. They celebrate the very best of people and partnerships involved in shaping game-changing innovations across Scotland.”
The Awards, as was the case last year, were hosted by Interface.
British satellite builders In-Space Missions, global tech firm Thales, and missile manufacturer MBDA have joined defence multinational BAE Systems in seeking female tech talent with Code First Girls — the UK provider of free coding courses for women.
With the partnership, women — who can be from any professional or educational background — will be sponsored to study Code First Girls degrees, providing them with the essential coding skills that’ll then enable them to pursue on-the-ground defence and aerospace careers with companies such as In-Space Missions, Thales, MBDA, and BAE Systems.
In the UK, women are seriously underrepresented in the aerospace and defence sectors — reflecting the wider and global trend in STEM education and careers.
The UN, for instance, reports that the overall number of women in the global aerospace industry has remained static for the last 30 years, with the figure fluctuating between 20% and 22%. What’s more, women tend to be employed in administrative- and educational-focused roles rather than technical jobs (where men are twice as likely to have an engineering role), thereby obscuring an even wider gender gap beneath the surface.
Woman-led social enterprise Code First Girls, whose mission is to improve women’s participation in tech, says that they’re seeing an increasing number of women looking beyond roles offered by big tech firms, as tech companies more broadly are recognising that diversity is vital for innovation.
The recruitment drive comes at a pivotal time for the UK as it tries to establish itself as an aerospace leader, despite recent hiccups such as Virgin Orbit’s failed rocket launch in Cornwall in January.
Elizabeth Seward, Head of Space Strategy & Future Business at BAE Systems Digital Intelligence, commented on the drive, saying: “To stay ahead in the New Space Age, building capacity and diverse digital skills are essential for ensuring continued secure innovation. Yet, the glaring digital skills gap poses a significant challenge to the future of the space sector. Our research found that 56% of senior aerospace decision makers said the combination of attracting and retaining the right talent is presenting a major challenge.
“What’s more, over a quarter (26%) cited a lack of diversity – including gender, ethnic background and age – when it comes to recruiting STEM talent is holding back their business. Social enterprises, like Code First Girls, are therefore vital in driving a renaissance in the way the society thinks about STEM education and in giving women access to the digital skills required to innovate and stay ahead.
“We as an industry have a collective responsibility to inspire all of the next generation to look to the stars, regardless of gender and fostering opportunities closer to home will get us there. For government, business leaders and the space sector, the urgency of investing in STEM, and equipping innovators should be at the top of the policy agenda and part of every roadmap to future advantage in space.”
In-Space Missions’ Chief Operating Officer, Dr Kathryn O’Donnell, also commented, saying: “In our industry, diversity drives innovation by providing us the right mix of minds — giving us the competitive edge.
“Though we’re already bucking the trend in our sector for the number of women we employ, we recognise that we can do so much more – and our partnership with Code First Girls is a positive step towards eliminating the diversity gap.”
Conducted by Opinion Matters on behalf of Glasgow-founded asynchronous video interview platform Willo, the aim of the UK-wide national survey was to understand how working habits have changed in the wake of the novel coronavirus and the subsequent series of lockdowns.
Despite the pervasive anxiety, stress, and pain surrounding COVID-19’s onset and spread, the necessity of the lockdowns provided many people with the opportunity to reassess what’s important to them, both in work and wider life — as well as introducing them to the work from home model.
Around 35% of respondents said lockdowns had made them more likely to consider leaving a job if their employers wouldn’t allow them to work from home, with people under the age of 45 being even more likely to do so (16–24-year-olds 48%; 25–34-year-olds 53%; 35-44 year-olds 44%).
In terms of geographical differences in Scotland, 43% of workers in Edinburgh said they’d leave their job if bosses asked them to return to the office full-time — which is higher than the national number. Meanwhile, around 30% of Glaswegians said they’d leave.
Further, more than half of all Scottish respondents said they would now consider applying for a job that enables them to work from home (54%), with about the same number considering roles that enable them to work remotely from anywhere in the world (53%).
Despite of the cost-of-living crisis driving up the costs of running a home, more than half of Scottish respondents (57%) also said they were unlikely to consider working from an office again.
Willo’s study also uncovered some intriguing data concerning Scottish workers’ attitude towards commuting — something that working from home eliminates either partly or wholly: more than a third of Scots said they will never spend as much time commuting as they did before the pandemic (37%), with those aged under 44 again less likely to do so.
The study’s results come on the backdrop of global employers increasingly calling on staff to return to offices, with a separate survey conducted by Slack published earlier this year revealing that 50% of leaders want workforces back on site.
“The Covid-19 pandemic drove the biggest change to working habits since the industrial revolution. It changed what we thought was possible when it comes to work, and for the better,” said Euan Cameron, the founder of Willo.
“Sectors that were previously tied to offices have been liberated, with staff enjoying increased flexibility and choice, and employers reaping the benefits of more appropriate premises and access to talent once off limits due to geography or time zone. It’s a win-win.
“Three years is enough time to show a true shift in worker and employer behaviour. It’s no secret that lockdowns were the final hurdle on remote working going mainstream, but what this survey shows is that working from home is now considered a right, not a perk or privilege. If workers aren’t afforded it, they’ll vote with their feet and I think we ‘ll see more of that as years progress.
“It goes beyond work from home too – to work from anywhere. More than half of Willo’s workforce is based outside of the UK, and it brings huge benefits in terms of diversity, talent, and productivity. It provides access to a global talent pool rather than just regional.
“Nobody will forget the pain suffered during the Covid-19 pandemic, but if there’s a silver lining it’s the acceleration of much-needed changes in the way we live and work, and they’re here to stay.”
The programme is set to deliver training and skills development over an initial 8-week period, with the chance for interested trainees to then study for a full Code First Girls degree, and secure permanent roles with Royal Bank of Scotland.
Up to 60 women will be able to take advantage of these opportunities from March 22nd, with recruitment centres taking place at the Ukrainian Community Centre, Royal Terrace Edinburgh, as well as the Leith Ukrainian refugee accommodation aboard the MS Victoria cruise liner.
“As a bank we recognise that we have a unique opportunity to utilise our resources and influence real change to improve lives in Scotland,” said Wincie Wong, Head of Workforce Technical Capability, Digital X at Royal Bank of Scotland.
“Our latest partnership with Code First Girls allows us to continue our commitment to helping displaced Ukrainians and empowering women in their careers. Through the programme, we will provide bespoke coding and software engineering as well as opportunities to gain work experience and be supported into employment.
“We’re a relationship bank in a digital world and we recognise the need to continually attract and retain a talented and diverse technology workforce. Building Scotland’s coding and software engineering sector will be vital to reach our full potential as a nation and we can’t wait to see what our inaugural group will achieve”.
Anna Brailsford, the CEO of Code First Girls, also commented on the recruitment drive, saying: “We are thrilled to partner with Royal Bank to offer this new opportunity for displaced Ukrainian women to learn new skills and embark on a career path in coding and software engineering.
“We believe that by empowering women in technology, we can help to build a more diverse and inclusive industry that is better equipped to meet the demands of today and innovate for the future.”
Previous to this programme, RBS partnered with Edinburgh City Council and the Scottish Government to open a Welcome Centre for displaced Ukrainians within their headquarters. The site has since distributed thousands of welcome packs, toothbrushes, books, and sanitary packs, among other essentials.
Meanwhile, as a social enterprise, Code First Girls has delivered £75 million worth of free technology education in the UK, and provided free education and employment opportunities for more than 110,000 women to help reduce the gender diversity gap in tech both across the UK and globally.
The recent survey, which was conducted by Ashbrook Research on behalf of NHS Partner InnoScot Health, also highlighted that most staff want to be a part of the drive for making innovative ideas a reality, with 71% saying they themselves have offered ideas on how to better the delivery of healthcare on one occasion or more.
Further, nearly two-thirds (64%) of NHS staff think of themselves as innovators “to some extent,” and say they have ideas to improve the NHS. One in six respondents even said they believe they are innovators “to a great extent.”
Underpinning the staff’s drive to innovate and offer solutions is the desire to increase efficiency (95%), to make a difference to patients (97%), as well as to make their and their colleagues’ working lives easier (98%). According to a separate study conducted by the NHS, the 2022 NHS Staff Survey, one-third (34%) of its staff across the UK said they felt burnout due to their work — which responding to COVID-19, on top of funding cuts, has worsened.
“The challenges facing NHS Scotland are well reported, however as we work towards the modernisation of NHS Scotland, this survey makes it clear that staff are a major part of the solution,” said Scotland’s Chief Scientist for Health, Professor Dame Anna Dominiczak.
“It shows that there is an undoubted desire to innovate from within in order to improve outcomes for both patients and those working within health and social care. It underlines our belief that the NHS is a great driver of innovation – dedicated, hard-working staff understand the issues and how we can help solve them.
“As leaders, I believe that to rise to current challenges – and look beyond them too – we need to support and encourage fresh NHS ideas, while strengthening partnerships across the sector. More and better collaboration, with targeted and expert support, will help get innovation into patients’ hands quicker.
“This survey shows that now is absolutely the right time to do that; to really utilise the vast enthusiasm, talent and depth of healthcare expertise that we have here in Scotland, take the workforce’s most transformative, innovative ideas and accelerate their development and ultimate adoption back into the NHS.”
InnoScot Health’s research also produced some insights regarding who among NHS Scotland’s staff are most and least likely to contribute ideas and potential solutions.
NHS Scotland staff who have worked for less than five years are, according to the survey, least likely to express an idea (61%). However, this increases with length of service (78% for those who have worked in NHS Scotland for more than 20 years).
What’s more, while NHS Scotland innovators can share in revenue returns from implemented innovations, the survey indicates that those who have worked in NHS Scotland for more than 20 years are least likely to identify money as a significant motivation to propose an idea (30%).
Executive Chair of InnoScot Health, Graham Watson, also commented on the survey, saying: “Over the past 20 years, InnoScot Health has worked with nurses, surgeons, paramedics and many more. A strong pipeline of new ideas has been delivered into service through our enduring commitment to supporting innovation. The importance which staff clearly place on the role of innovation within the NHS is hugely encouraging.
“Our survey has illuminated a positive picture of support for transformative NHS-led innovation.
“We have now arrived at a key juncture for NHS Scotland amid significant winter challenges – and it must be considered an opportune time to leverage the promise of pandemic-inspired new ways of working.
“The NHS workforce message is clear – we can and want to innovate at this pivotal time for healthcare.”
The survey’s results come in at the end of a particularly difficult winter for the NHS. In January this year, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said that the winter of 2022-23 was “without doubt the worst that the NHS in Scotland has faced,” resulting in a series of strikes across NHS Scotland.
“We signed a statement on deepening the strategic partnership and bilateral ties which are entering a new era,” said Xi, following the visit to Moscow.
The statement in question, “Joint Statement between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation on Deepening the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership of Coordination in the New Era,” covers a lot of ground — from art to sport. But there’s a particularly large emphasis on technology, with the two countries outlining their co-operative, tech-oriented aims.
Innovative, forward-thinking areas of tech — such as artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT), as well as climate change-oriented technology — have been outlined in the statement as key areas of focus for the two countries moving forward.
A loosely translated version of the statement written in Chinese reads: “The two parties will deepen mutually beneficial cooperation in the field of scientific and technological innovation, expand talent exchanges in the industry, tap the potential of cooperation in basic research, applied research, and industrialization of scientific and technological achievements, and focus on frontier fields of science and technology and joint research on common issues of global development, including coping with and adapting to climate change.
“[Also] Exploring new cooperation models in technology and industry fields such as artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, 5G, digital economy, and low-carbon economy.”
On the strengthened partnership, and specifically referencing collaborative tech efforts, Putin stated: “Technological sovereignty is the key to sustainability. We propose further improving strategic partnerships in specific industries. By combining our wealth of research capacity and industrial capabilities, Russia and China can become world leaders in information technology, cyber security, and artificial intelligence.”
Despite the two Presidents’ strengthening of cooperative efforts to meet their goal of becoming world leaders in tech, what may hamper the rest of the world adopting any newly-created technologies is current international relations.
In just the last few months, Western governments — including the UK Government — have banned politicians and other governmental workers from using Chinese-owned social media app TikTok on their work mobile phones amid potential security concerns, while a Chinese-operated high-altitude balloon spotted in North American airspace in late January added more tension to Western-Chinese relations. Meanwhile, the ongoing Ukraine war continues to directly impact Western ties with Russia.
At the time of writing, Bard is available to select UK and US users, with all members of the public in both countries now able to join a waitlist. While the roll out is currently limited, Google has stated that access to the generative AI chatbot will be available to more countries and languages over time.
Today’s roll out is big news in the global tech sphere, especially since Bard, shortly after being unveiled last month, mistakenly presented inaccurate information in a demo question about the James Webb Space Telescope — causing Google parent company Alphabet to lose around $100 billion in value.
What is Bard?
Bard, at its core, is a chatbot — but a more intelligent, AI-powered one. With it being powered by Google’s LaMDA (short for “Language Model for Dialogue Applications”) technology, the chatbot attempts to provide users with high-quality, text-based answers to their queries and requests.
The use cases for which Bard can be used have huge variance. For instance, it could be asked questions like “which Scots tech companies secured the most funding in 2022?,” while it could also be used, as Google suggested, “to give you tips to reach your goal of reading more books this year” or “explain quantum physics in simple terms.”
However, much like other recent generative AI chatbots — not least OpenAI’s GPT-4 — the answers presently supplied aren’t always factually accurate. Speaking of which, earlier today, Axios reported that GPT-4 readily spouts misinformation.
No wonder, then, Google has stated the following on the blog post for Bard’s UK and US roll out: “While LLMs are an exciting technology, they’re not without their faults. For instance, because they learn from a wide range of information that reflects real-world biases and stereotypes, those sometimes show up in their outputs. And they can provide inaccurate, misleading or false information while presenting it confidently. For example, when asked to share a couple suggestions for easy indoor plants, Bard convincingly presented ideas… but it got some things wrong, like the scientific name for the ZZ plant.”
How Does Bard (Currently) Work, Exactly?
According to those who witnessed a Bard demo, the chatbot’s user interface is much like its competitors’: the user is presented with a text box, and Bard invites them to ask questions. It then generates a few different responses for the user to choose from. Underneath the responses, there’s a “Google It” button, which navigates the user to Google’s search engine.
In the blog post, Google has also stated that they think of Bard as a “complimentary experience” to Google Search, and has been designed in such a way with the “Google It” button. This, theoretically, should help users to verify the legitimacy of Bard’s answers, before potentially believing them to be wholly true or acting on them.
The accuracy of Bard’s responses is, apparently, hit-or-miss — with the chatbot supplying three differently incorrect answers on a tricky, numbers-heavy question during the demo. When AI does this — confidently gives a response, thinking that it’s right but is ultimately wrong — it’s referred to as a “hallucination.”
Considering these hallucinations, Google has specified in its roll out post that Bard is an “early experiment,” and that the language model tech that underpins generative AI currently contains flaws.
What’s Being Done When It Comes to Ethics and Safety?
Google says that its work on Bard has been guided by its AI Principles, which are: be socially beneficial, avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias, be built and tested for safety, be accountable to people, incorporate privacy design principles, uphold high standards of scientific excellence, and be made available for uses that accord with these principles.
The company also says that “we continue to focus on quality and safety.” As well as using human feedback and evaluation to guide their work — which this cautious UK and US roll out should surely help to support — Google has “built in guardrails, like capping the number of exchanges in a dialogue, to try to keep interactions helpful and on topic.”
As the company said themselves: “Bard is an experiment and may give inaccurate or inappropriate responses. You can help make Bard better by leaving feedback.”
Now in its second year, the FinTech Innovation Challenge — a collaboration between Digital Isle of Man and Finance Isle of Man, supported by the Isle of Man Financial Services Authority and Deloitte — tasks selected businesses to develop solutions to key issues facing the financial services industry.
With entries from Switzerland to Singapore, India to the US, the chosen businesses will now work with the Isle of Man Government, financial institutions, and other key stakeholders to define and develop their industry-specific solutions over the course of the next three months.
Whittled down from a longlist of 45, the 16 companies taking part in this year’s Challenge include:
Blindspot Solutions (Czech Republic). Blindspot delivers services and precisely engineered software products standing on AI, machine learning, cybersecurity, and optimisation principles.
Codos Foundation (Switzerland). The Codos Foundation aims to support digital solutions for measuring and rewarding sustainable behavior, CO₂ mitigation, and environmental protection, including the Codos reward platform and its ecosystem.
Crucial Compliance (Gibraltar). Crucial Compliance’s aim is to support companies in building a long-term sustainable, effective, and responsible betting and gaming model.
Cygnetise (UK). Cygnetise enables organisations to easily manage their signatory lists and bank mandates, whilst decreasing the risk of signatory fraud.
Digidentity (Holland). Digidentity was established in 2008 to enable and protect people’s digital lives. That goal is still at the heart of Digidentity’s expanded mission to develop a safe and sustainable digital ecosystem for all.
ID-Pal (Ireland). ID-Pal enables businesses to verify the identity of customers in real-time simply, securely and conveniently.
Infrasoft Technologies (India). Kiya.ai (Infrasoft Technologies) is an innovative digital solutions provider, serving financial institutions and governments globally.
ONBORD (UK). With a mission to be the first line of defence for the business ecosystem, ONBORD is an all-in-one onboard/KYC-as-a-Service.
SignD Identity (Austria). SignD is a ‘one-stop shop’ for implementing a fully compliant onboarding/KYC-process in one week.
SQR Group (UK). SQR Group is building a brand-new biometric, cross platform, multi network, Identity, payment, KYC & AML solution for banking, payments, eGaming, Esports & eCommerce.
Sure (Isle of Man). Sure delivers mobile, broadband, fixed line, data centre and enterprise solutions to consumers, corporate and public sector clients.
Trust Stamp (US). Trust Stamp is a global provider of AI-powered identity services for use in multiple sectors including banking and finance, regulatory compliance, government, real estate, communications, and humanitarian services.
WeavAir (Canada, Singapore, South Korea). WeavAir has built a solution that harnesses satellite data, advanced IoT sensors, as well as predictive software, to optimize ESG investment and operation of assets like buildings and fleets while improving safety and reducing emissions and carbon footprint.
Yoti (UK). Yoti makes it safer for people to prove who they are with a free consumer app that puts your ID on your phone.
Whitespace Global.
Nettle.
These firms’ solutions are set to target a range of significant issues in the financial services industry, from blockchain and cryptographic protections, to AI-based business forecasting and ESG audits.
“We are extremely pleased to announce the cohort for the FinTech Innovation Challenge. The calibre of applicants was incredibly high, and we believe the selected businesses have the potential to make a significant impact in the FinTech industry,” said Tim Johnston MHK, Minister for Enterprise.
“We look forward to supporting them as they develop their solutions and contribute to our growing digital economy.”
All 16 businesses will be guided by Challenge Mentors, who are drawn from leading institutions such as Barclays, Lloyds, and Capital International.
The participants will also have direct access to the Isle of Man’s Financial Services Authority (FSA), Gambling Supervision Commission (GSC), Information Commissioner (ICO) and Government Technology Services (GTS).
On June 29, the Challenge will culminate with a Demo Day where each business will showcase their solution to an audience of judges, industry experts, and potential customers.
On the announcement, Michael Crowe, Chief Executive of Finance Isle of Man, commented: “The selected businesses represent the cutting edge of financial technology. Under the guidance of the mentors, applicants will receive top level masterclasses, coaches and mentoring.
“I look forward to seeing this cohort develop and scale-up their business solutions, building on the Isle of Man’s success as a hub for growth and financial expertise.”
Lyle Wraxall, Chief Executive of Digital Isle of Man, also commented: “The FinTech Innovation Challenge will showcase some of the most exciting ideas from companies across the world that are shaping the future of financial services.
“The Challenge will give them the chance to use the Island’s technical expertise, proactive regulatory support, and welcoming business community to refine their solutions and bring their products to market.
“This will be a hugely competitive three months in the lead up to Demo Day in June, and we can’t wait to get started.”
Having worked at Burness Paull earlier in his career, MacKinven re-joins the firm after a tenure of just under four years at Abu Dhabi-based Flash Entertainment, where he served as general counsel and company secretary. Before this, he spent five years with magic circle firm Clifford Chance, first as an associate and then a senior associate.
MacKinven brings robust experience of the media, live entertainment, and sports industries from his time with Flash Entertainment, the Abu Dhabi government’s strategic sports and entertainment group that’s responsible for delivering high-profile music, sports, and cultural events in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Last year, MacKinven was featured in the Legal 500 Middle East GC Power List 2022.
On MacKinven’s appointment, Burness Paull’s head of technology and commercial, Callum Sinclair, said: “The media, entertainment and sports industries have evolved significantly as they seek new ways to grow their audiences and deliver a greater customer experience.
“We anticipate further growth in these sectors in the coming years and are committed to supporting our clients to achieve their commercial objectives, explore new opportunities and adapt to changing regulations.
“Fraser brings considerable experience of the various types of issues and commercial contracts that those operating in these sectors face. His corporate background also puts him in an excellent position to provide specialist support on M&A transactions that have media and entertainment elements, as we draw on the skills and experience from across the firm to ensure the best possible outcomes for our clients.”
Peter Lawson, chair at Burness Paull, also said: “Our technology and commercial division is a strategic growth area for the firm and has expanded considerably in recent years, fuelled by instructions from our strong UK and international client base.
“Fraser is the latest example of an alumnus returning to the firm having gained rich and varied experience outside Scotland. The expertise and perspective he brings from having worked in-house and internationally will further enhance our client offering.”
MacKinven himself added: “I am excited to be re-joining Burness Paull. The firm has grown considerably in the intervening years and it’s encouraging to see it has retained the strong culture that provided so many fond memories.
“I am looking forward to working with the team, many of whom are familiar faces, in support of the firm’s strong and varied client roster.”
These layoffs are said to mostly impact Amazon’s cloud unit (AWS), the Advertising department, the People Experience and Technology Solutions team (PXT), and the Twitch gaming division.
The news comes just months after the big tech company let go of around 18,000 staff between November last year and January 2023.
“The uncertain economy in which we reside, and the uncertainty that exists in the near future” have been stated as the reasons underpinning both rounds of layoffs.
Andy Jassy, Amazon’s CEO, referenced Amazon’s staggered layoff approach in today’s memo.
“Some may ask why we didn’t announce these role reductions with the ones we announced a couple months ago. The short answer is that not all of the teams were done with their analyses in the late fall; and rather than rush through these assessments without the appropriate diligence, we chose to share these decisions as we’ve made them so people had the information as soon as possible,” Jassy wrote.
He also stated that the final decision of which roles are being axed hasn’t yet been made; it’s slated to be completed by mid-late April.
“The same is true for this note as the impacted teams are not yet finished making final decisions on precisely which roles will be impacted. Once those decisions have been made (our goal is to have this complete by mid to late April), we will communicate with the impacted employees (or where applicable in Europe, with employee representative bodies). We will, of course, support those we have to let go, and will provide packages that include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, and external job placement support.”
“This was a difficult decision, but one that we think is best for the company long term,” he also said.
Google and Microsoft are both participating in the AI race, as each company competes with their new chatbots.
Both companies directly addressed their pivot to prioritise AI innovation – staff in other sectors took the hit after each team hired a surplus during the pandemic.
Meta’s announcement was not so specific, but the company’s staff expected cuts as earnings dropped. The company was affected by changing privacy policies which impacted their ad selling capabilities – new GDPR rulings are set to majorly impact the use of personalised ads on Facebook and Instagram, and Zuckerberg said that those in the Family of Apps and Reality departments would be hit the hardest. More recently, the Big Tech company announced a further cut of around 10,000 staff in March 2023.
Layoffs at Yahoo! were largely the result of restructuring in its advertising departments so it would not be in direct competition with market dominators like Meta and Google.
Dell’s lay-offs were directly linked to a decrease in hardware purchases – most of their revenue came from personal computer sales, and with many returning to the office, these plummeted.
Similarly, Zoom announced it was cutting 15% of it’s workforce, likely driven by the return to the office and the advancement of other video conferencing services that are aligned with other services, like Microsoft Teams.
Spotify and PayPal’s announcements were much less specific, as neither company announced why they were firing or what departments would be most affected.
Twitter had a much more publicly contentious round of layoffs. About 50% of its global staff were fired, with some even locked out of their offices. Elon Musk’s infamous purchase of the company has exhausted the tech news cycle, and the firings came due to a massive loss in revenue as advertisers backed out of the platform.
IBM’s layoffs were a different story – two spin offs from the company meant IBM was effectively releasing workers through the layoffs. The company was actually performing quite well and intends to continue hiring during the progress.
For many companies, the tidal turn is simply a reflection of changing times after the pandemic – demand for tech was high across the board during the pandemic, and many giants took the opportunity to vacuum up talent. Now, the shift in the economy has left tech companies scrambling to make up for lost demand, and often they’ve turned to letting go their most valuable asset: people.
“The tech sector has pivoted from ‘the great resignation’ to ‘the great redundancy’ in the space of only a few months,” Martin Taylor, Co-Founder and Deputy CEO at Content Guru said. “Bullish post-Covid hiring collided with a tough macroeconomic outlook, just as the well of cheap investment cash dried up under the heat of interest rate hikes.”
Many tech workers were attracted to big companies due to a perception of stability as well as more benefits and larger salaries.
“However, given the size and scale of the layoffs, people are now doubting the stability of the largest players and are looking to up-and-coming smaller firms rather than the Big Tech monoliths,” Laurent Descout, CEO of Neo commented.
To read further commentary on the impact of the recent tech layoffs, click here.
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BenchSci’s report — which was conducted in partnership with tech market research company Vanson Bourne — surveyed over 200 UK-based AI experts (including machine learning and data engineers), to glean insights regarding the current employment-related attitudes and preferences of AI talent amid market instability.
The research underscored what, exactly, AI talent hold as important when evaluating prospective employers. Across the ten categories of stability, work environment, work arrangements, diversity, impact, mission, organisational benefits, flexibility, progression, remuneration, the latter three proved most important. These three categories ranked at 37%, 32%, and 32% respectively.
In terms of work-life flexibility, there is a clear post-pandemic demand for it among AI talent. Specifically, 70% of respondents want future employers to allow them to work flexible hours, while just 3% fewer — 67% of respondents — want a remote working policy to have been implemented.
As for progression (and while taking into account that progression is different for different people), cookie-cutter progression programmes and a lack of impactful learning and development opportunities aren’t going to entice knowledgeable tech talent. For instance, 62% said that they want flexible, self-defined career pathways — thereby giving them the autonomy and ability to mould their own career paths — while 60% said they want sufficient, high-quality training/learning and development opportunities.
When it comes to remuneration preferences, 63% of people said that the potential for a salary increase is most important to them, while the second-most important category is the base salary (58%). Employee share schemes, meanwhile, ranked the lowest at 51%.
Further, an especially interesting and key finding from BenchSci’s research is how, in 2023, AI talent actively prefer stable organisations with plans for long-term growth (46%) and strong profit margins (43%). This is compared to strong company valuation (32%) and the company raising substantial amounts of investment (30%), pointing to the trend of talent valuing security and stability during turbulence.
The report’s findings ultimately highlight that AI talent in the UK have continued to sustain a long-term approach when it comes to their career and job decision-making.
“This research has surfaced some very revealing data points, particularly in the current context and economic climate,” said Elizabeth Hanson, Director of Engineering, Data Delivery at BenchSci.
“Despite widespread murmurings of employees being flighty, perhaps as a result of the pandemic and the current recessionary environment, the data firmly shows that the AI workforce is still thinking long-term. Engineers specifically are looking for companies where they can invest their time, energy, and expertise in return for growth opportunities – both financial and developmental. This is the trend I’ve seen while hiring and searching for roles myself.
“Workplaces that meet these needs will not only attract the best talent, but retain them too.”
The trial, taking place on Sunday 23 April, will see Scotland — alongside Northern Ireland, Wales, and England — send an emergency warning message to mobile phone users across the country as part of a UK-wide test. The alert will appear on the home screens of mobile phones, with an audible warning sound and vibration accompanying it.
Making use of “new mobile broadcasting technology,” the Emergency Alerts system delivers urgent messages to 90% of mobile users within a targeted area, and provides them with guidance on how to respond. The message will also come with a gov.uk/alerts link, where more information regarding the situation can be found.
In a statement, the UK Government said that the Emergency Alerts would be used “very rarely,” and some people may not see an alert themselves for months if not years, considering that they’ll only be used when there’s an immediate, known threat to people’s lives.
Initially, the use of Emergency Alerts is set to be focused on serious weather-related events.
The new Emergency Alerts system was officially launched in the UK on 19 March, with some localised tests having previously been carried out in the UK in England.
On the Emergency Alerts system, Justice Secretary and lead Minister for resilience, Keith Brown, said: “This new service builds on the arrangements we already have in place with responders and other key organisations in Scotland to keep people safe during emergencies and save lives.
“The system has already been used successfully overseas in other countries including New Zealand, the Netherlands, Japan and the USA where it has been credited with saving lives during severe weather events and earthquakes.
“During rare events where there is an imminent risk to life, alerts can be sent direct to people’s mobile phones with clear instructions explaining what action to take and how to seek help.”
Oliver Dowden, MP and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, also commented: “We are strengthening our national resilience with a new emergency alerts system, to deal with a wide range of threats – from flooding to wild fires.
“It will revolutionise our ability to warn and inform people who are in immediate danger, and help us keep people safe. As we’ve seen in the U.S. and elsewhere, the buzz of a phone can save a life.”
UK Consumer Expectations of Mobile App Security, a two-year survey from Appdome which posed questions to just over 26,000 global consumers, has uncovered that over a quarter (26%) of British consumers believe mobile app security is more important than new features in Android and iOS apps, while more than half (59%) of British respondents ranked mobile app security equal to new features.
When it comes to the question of what protections British consumers expect to be built into a brand’s mobile app or apps, 42.8% of respondents said they expected the “best protections,” meaning that their data is fully protected, and that they’ll also be protected from viruses and fraud while using the app.
Interestingly, 47.3% of global respondents said they too expect the most robust protections possible, with the statistical difference potentially reflecting that the British public has less faith in mobile app developers to implement the appropriate security protections demanded.
The deep dive also highlighted the major mobile app security concerns that British consumers have, providing interesting data on how these worries have evolved in the last 12 months.
In particular, malware has become an increasingly growing threat in the minds of British respondents, with 29.3% saying so, while the figure was just 15.5% in the previous year. Similarly, British consumers are wary of mobile developers who don’t care about user security, with 26.4% identifying this threat as a concern, compared to only 9.3% in 2021. Meanwhile, 17.2% of British respondents said downloading a fake trojan app was worrying, with just 6.1% saying the same in 2021.
Further, the research highlighted that British consumers will actively champion and advocate for brands who take the data and security of its users seriously, with around 93% saying they’d reward and promote such brands/apps.
However, 71% of Android and 66% of iOS users stated they would abandon the brand/app — and tell others to follow suit — if a mobile app they use was breached or hacked.
“There are thousands of apps competing for British consumers’ attention and brands need to work much harder to gain the top spot as Britain’s most used and trusted apps,” said Tom Tovar, CEO and co-creator of Appdome.
“Mobile app security is a key part of the mobile user experience and this survey arms mobile brands with the information needed to choose the right protections for mobile apps and users.”
Chris Roeckl, Chief Product Officer at Appdome, also commented on the report’s findings, saying: “Protecting mobile apps has gone far beyond a compliance objective.
“British consumers have a high degree of cyber, fraud and malware sophistication and bring with them high expectations to their mobile app experience that mobile brands must meet to be successful.”
CIO Pulse: 2023 Budgets and Priorities, a survey undertaken by SoftwareOne to recognise the spend and priorities of 600 IT leaders, has underscored the post-pandemic reality of rushed, unoptimised cloud migration, with consequent technical debt representing a significant pain point for CIOs in 2023.
Technical debt is the price companies pay for short-term delivery of projects at the cost of long-term value, and, in this instance, hinders CIOs’ attempts of furthering operational efficiency and productivity.
Specifically, CIO Pulse found that 55% of respondents are dealing with knock-on issues prompted by a lack of preparation when moving to the cloud; 38% are dealing with issues caused by a rushed migration to the cloud; and 17% say they moved applications and services to the cloud without full budget planning.
Additionally, almost a third (31%) of respondents said they’re not receiving the desired results from cloud because workloads weren’t optimised before migration.
Only around a quarter (27%) of IT leaders confirmed that the value they expected from their cloud investment has been greatly exceeded, with rushed implementations and flawed service configuration directly impacting long-term value for organisations.
This technical debt — combined with cloud’s rising costs, and economic volatility — means that even with increased IT budgets going forward, budgets will likely need to be stretched. While 93% of CIOs expect IT budgets to increase in 2023, 83% believe they’ll need to achieve more with less.
Technical debt aside, the report also highlighted firms’ current priorities as CIOs continue to leverage cloud services for delivering successful digital transformation within their organisations.
This includes driving better cost-efficiency by modernising existing cloud implementations, and reducing costs associated with on-prem infrastructure by migrating key applications to the cloud.
According to the findings, one in four IT leaders seek to migrate critical workloads to the cloud, pointing to rapid increases in workload that exceed capacity (40%) and continued transformation (40%).
Further, 40% of respondents said that continued cloud migration is pivotal for reducing IT costs in the next 12 months, with 39% believing that pivoting to native cloud services would help them in driving down licensing costs.
A machine customer takes the place of a human customer, acquiring goods or services in exchange for payment. And, according to Gartner, they’re set to be involved with a wide range of both business- and consumer-related purchases.
“The machine customer era has already begun,” stated Don Scheibenreif, one of the authors of When Machines Become Customers, Gartner’s latest book.
“There are more machines with the potential to act as buyers than humans on the planet. Today, there are more than 9.7 billion installed IoT devices, including equipment monitoring, surveillance cameras, connected cars, smart lighting, tablets, smartwatches, smart speaker [sic] and connected printers.
“Each of these has a steadily improving ability to analyze information and make decisions. Every IoT enabled product could become a customer. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2027 50% of people in advanced economies will have AI personal assistants working for them every day.”
Gartner argues that, while we’re in the first phase of the machine customers’ evolution, executives across enterprise must begin collaborating to prepare for the onset of machine customers. This includes CIOs to marketing officers, supply chain officers to revenue officers.
HP Instant Ink, Amazon Dash Replenishment, and Tesla’s cars can be exemplified as services at the first phase of machine customers’ evolution, Gartner has said, as they automatically perform limited functions for owners. As a “bound customer,” they execute a strict set of actions, and are confined by the rules set by the owner.
“In the second emerging phase, people still set the rules for machines as ‘adaptable customers’, although AI technology can choose and act on behalf of a human with minimal intervention for select tasks,” explained Mark Raskino, the book’s other author.
The third and final phase is said to be where machine customers become “autonomous customers,” and can harness enough intelligence to act independently of humans, and in a discreet way where it takes ownership of the transaction process.
“What the machine customers from each phase have in common is that they will make decisions differently from humans in three ways,” said Scheibenreif.
“They are logical and will make decisions based on rules that may or may not be transparent. Second, they can also process large amounts of information. Lastly, machines focus on completing tasks efficiently and without emotion, and they can’t be influenced by being ‘wine [sic] and dined.’”
According to a timeline provided by Gartner, the third phase of machine customers’ evolution is suggested to be around 2036.
Speaking in the Commons earlier, Dowden said that the ban will take immediate effect.
The ban comes following a review by the National Cyber Security Centre, which looked into the vulnerability of governmental data on government devices, and the risks of how sensitive information could be accessed and used by social media apps.
“The security of sensitive government information must come first, so today we are banning this app on government devices. The use of other data-extracting apps will be kept under review.
“Restricting the use of TikTok on Government devices is a prudent and proportionate step following advice from our cyber security experts,” Dowden said.
However, ministers and civil servants are still permitted to use and keep the app on their personal devices.
The UK government’s decision to ban TikTok — which is owned by Beijing-based company ByteDance — on government devices is in line with the US, the European Commission, and Canadian governments.
The platform has faced further scrutiny in the west recently, as concerns over how the data may or could be used by the Chinese company — and then perhaps Chinese officials — grows.
“TikTok requires users to give permission for the app to access data stored on the device, which is then collected and stored by the company. Allowing such permissions gives the company access to a range of data on the device, including contacts, user content, and geolocation data,” the government said.
“The government, along with our international partners, is concerned about the way in which this data may be used.”
According to the Guardian, a TikTok spokesperson commented on the UK government’s ban, saying: “We believe these bans have been based on fundamental misconceptions and driven by wider geopolitics, in which TikTok, and our millions of users in the UK, play no part. We remain committed to working with the government to address any concerns.”
While Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner welcomed the ban, she also accused the government of being “behind the curve” with banning the app on government devices, with the United States, Canada, and the European Parliament having already done so.
Further, just hours ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US’ position on TikTok has escalated, with the Biden administration threatening to implement a U.S.-wide ban unless the app’s Chinese owners sell their stakes in the company.
Updates
Just as Tik Tok CEO Shou Zi Chew attends a hearing in the US Congress, the UK Parliament has announced that TikTok will be banned from all Parliamentary devices and the wider parliamentary network.
Scotland is to follow Westminster’s example, banning the social media app from all Scottish Parliament devices.
In terms of methodology, the Hoxhunt team settled on a phishing prompt, and then gave both their human social engineers and ChatGPT an afternoon to craft phishing emails based on the prompt. Four simulation pairs—four human, four AI— were then sent to over 53,000 users in Hoxhunt’s network, and across 100 countries.
The results of the study uncovered that phishing emails written by humans induced a 4.2% failure rate overall — meaning that 4.2% of respondents clicked the email’s fake malicious link. Only 2.9% of people did the same with phishing emails crafted by AI.
The research also highlighted geographical differences regarding the failure and success rate. For instance, U.K.-based respondents had a failure rate of 4.1% when it came to AI-written phishing emails, and 5.2% for human-written ones. Meanwhile, the U.S. had the highest failure rate for ChatGPT’s phishing attempts (4.5%), and Sweden had the highest failure rate for human-written phishing emails (6.1%).
Additionally, the data from the research underscored the positive impact of security awareness training. “Those users with more experience in a security awareness and behavior change program displayed significant protection against phishing attacks by both human and AI-generated emails,” wrote Pyry Åvist, Founder and CTO of Hoxhunt.
“[F]ailure rates dropped from over 14% with less trained users to between 2-4% with experienced users.”
ChatGPT’s introduction sent much of the tech world into a headspin last year — not least the cybersecurity industry, given ChatGPT’s ability to be utilised by bad actors. However, Åvist said the study’s results show that humans are still better at hacking other humans — for now.
“ChatGPT can code malware without requiring the user to have any coding skills,” wrote Åvist. “It can write grammatically impeccable text for functionally illiterate criminals on simple prompts like, ‘Create an email written by the CEO to the finance department re-directing all invoices to a specific account in Curacao.’”
“Given its malicious capabilities and its mass availability, we all lost our minds imagining a future where the robots were stealing our lunch money. But the results clearly indicate that humans remain better at hoodwinking other humans, outperforming AI by 69% (4.2% vs. 2.9% induced failure rate).
“It’s important to remember that these results reflect the current state of this threat. This experiment was performed before the release of ChatGPT 4. Large language models like ChatGPT will likely rapidly evolve and improve at tricking people into clicking. Even so, there’s reason to remain calm if you’re already addressing human risk with a security behavior change program,” he reassured.
As Åvist mentioned, the human-AI gap here is likely to close as AI gets progressively more intelligent. Just this week, OpenAI unveiled GPT-4, ChatGPT’s latest version.
Originally operated by Tech Nation, the LawtechUK programme supports the UK’s growth of lawtech and innovation in the delivery of legal services.
From April, CodeBase and Legal Geek will be responsible for driving forward and building on the work of the Lawtech Delivery Panel — an industry-led body designed to promote and champion the use of technology in the UK’s legal sector, which the MoJ sees as vital.
Through this grant, CodeBase and Legal Geek will deliver a programme of activities showcasing the UK as a leading location for lawtech innovation.
The consortium will seek to grow the lawtech community across the UK, raise the quality of startups, increase private investment, facilitate the exchange of information between service providers and lawtech businesses, and generate industry-level views that shape the UK’s lawtech agenda.
On the announcement, Justice Minister Mike Freer said: “The UK is a world leader in delivering legal services and expertise, and our ongoing investment in new technologies will make sure we are continuing to lead the way in advances and new ways of working.
“CodeBase and Legal Geek bring a wealth of experience and knowledge of LawtechUK that will nurture new, cutting-edge innovation in the UK.”
CodeBase, which opened its doors in 2014 and is headquartered in Edinburgh, is a tech ecosystem support organisation helping to accelerate promising tech innovation across the UK. Thus far, it’s supported over 500 startups and scaleups.
CodeBase’s CEO, Stephen Coleman, OBE, commented: “Together with our delivery partners Legal Geek, who are renowned for delivering top-tier legal events, we are eager to push the boundaries of innovation and transformation in the legal industry.
“We truly believe that LawtechUK will have a significant impact on the future of the legal sector, and we feel privileged to be leading the charge in this endeavour.”
Legal Geek is a global community of legal professionals and lawtech enthusiasts dedicated to promoting innovation and technology in the legal industry, hosting events, conferences, and initiatives internationally.
Beth Fellner, Legal Geek Director, said: “We will be working in partnership with CodeBase to deliver a transformational programme of activity that will engage, inspire and educate.
“Legal Geek will ensure LawtechUK develops the legal sector nationwide, equipping organisations of all sizes with the culture, expertise and confidence to innovate.”
Today’s news comes off the back of a series of recent wins for CodeBase, including supporting Barclays Eagle Labs as delivery partner for the £12 million Digital Growth Grant from April 2023. Further, in July 2022, CodeBase was awarded a contract worth up to £42 million to establish seven new tech scaler hubs across Scotland, as part of the Scottish Government’s Techscaler programme.
Previously, CodeBase launched the Lawtech Bridge programme in partnership with Barclays Ventures in 2019. The programme was designed to break down the barriers between law firms and startups, and provide a forum to discuss the technological advances and innovation needed to futureproof law in Scotland’s economy.
With its proprietary software, Swoop, the Scottish firm enables brand owners to monitor the web for fake and copycat goods, thereby protecting the business’ reputation and revenues, as well as end-consumers from unwittingly purchasing counterfeits.
The A.I.-propelled tech also helps brands to search the web to find infringing content, and work to have them removed before further damage is done.
SnapDragon’s announcement of international reach expansion comes off the back of the company’s annual turnover increasing by 29% last year, as well as an exports increase of 49%.
Further, the Scottish firm’s headcount grew by 20%, with seasoned legal professional Ewan McIntyre — who was appointed as the company’s first General Counsel — and beauty guru Wilma McDaniel — who joined as Head of Beauty to help educate on and tackle counterfeits in the sector — named as two of the firm’s latest key appointments.
“We are delighted with our success over the last year, which has seen our businesses grow not just in figures, but also in Dragons,” said Rachel Jones, CEO of SnapDragon Monitoring.
“Everyday consumers and businesses get caught out by fakes and counterfeits, and we are on a mission to help our customers and prospects do more to identify these fraudulent goods and websites before they cause harm.
In the next year, we plan to scale the business across further international regions, and also increase our footprint within the legal sector. The ultimate goal is to make the online world a safer place for both consumers and businesses.”
Counterfeiting is a huge business, with the figures from the U.K. government showing that the annual loss to the economy through counterfeiting and piracy is £9 billion. Additionally, genuine brands come directly in the firing line for not doing more to protect customers against the illegal and dangerous trade.
According to the update, the layoffs will be staggered over the next couple of months. The tech giant’s recruiting staff are set to know whether they’re impacted tomorrow, followed by announcements in April regarding tech group restructures and layoffs, and then changes concerning the company’s business groups are set to be declared in late May.
In addition to the job cuts, 5,000 unfilled roles will be closed as hiring temporarily pauses.
In this particular instance, however, the company references its “Year of Efficiency” efforts — aiming to “improve financial performance in a difficult environment so we can execute our long term vision” — as the reason underpinning today’s announcement.
After a period of restructuring, reducing hiring rates, and cancelling lower priority projects, Zuckerberg said that the company aims to hire again later on in the year.
“After restructuring, we plan to lift hiring and transfer freezes in each group. Other relevant efficiency timelines include targeting this summer to complete our analysis from our hybrid work year of learning so we can further refine our distributed work model,” Zuckerberg wrote.
“We also aim to have a steady stream of developer productivity enhancements and process improvements throughout the year.
“As I’ve talked about efficiency this year, I’ve said that part of our work will involve removing jobs — and that will be in service of both building a leaner, more technical company and improving our business performance to enable our long term vision.”
The company’s co-founder and CEO also said, “My hope is to make these org changes as soon as possible in the year so we can get past this period of uncertainty and focus on the critical work ahead.”
Google and Microsoft are both participating in the AI race, as each company competes with their new chatbots.
Both companies directly addressed their pivot to prioritise AI innovation – staff in other sectors took the hit after each team hired a surplus during the pandemic.
Meta’s announcement was not so specific, but the company’s staff expected cuts as earnings dropped. The company was affected by changing privacy policies which impacted their ad selling capabilities – new GDPR rulings are set to majorly impact the use of personalised ads on Facebook and Instagram, and Zuckerberg said that those in the Family of Apps and Reality departments would be hit the hardest.
Layoffs at Yahoo! were largely the result of restructuring in its advertising departments so it would not be in direct competition with market dominators like Meta and Google.
Dell’s lay-offs were directly linked to a decrease in hardware purchases – most of their revenue came from personal computer sales, and with many returning to the office, these plummeted.
Similarly, Zoom announced it was cutting 15% of it’s workforce, likely driven by the return to the office and the advancement of other video conferencing services that are aligned with other services, like Microsoft Teams.
Spotify and PayPal’s announcements were much less specific, as neither company announced why they were firing or what departments would be most affected.
Twitter had a much more publicly contentious round of layoffs. About 50% of its global staff were fired, with some even locked out of their offices. Elon Musk’s infamous purchase of the company has exhausted the tech news cycle, and the firings came due to a massive loss in revenue as advertisers backed out of the platform.
IBM’s layoffs were a different story – two spin offs from the company meant IBM was effectively releasing workers through the layoffs. The company was actually performing quite well and intends to continue hiring during the progress.
For many companies, the tidal turn is simply a reflection of changing times after the pandemic – demand for tech was high across the board during the pandemic, and many giants took the opportunity to vacuum up talent. Now, the shift in the economy has left tech companies scrambling to make up for lost demand, and often they’ve turned to letting go their most valuable asset: people.
“The tech sector has pivoted from ‘the great resignation’ to ‘the great redundancy’ in the space of only a few months,” Martin Taylor, Co-Founder and Deputy CEO at Content Guru said. “Bullish post-Covid hiring collided with a tough macroeconomic outlook, just as the well of cheap investment cash dried up under the heat of interest rate hikes.”
Many tech workers were attracted to big companies due to a perception of stability as well as more benefits and larger salaries.
“However, given the size and scale of the layoffs, people are now doubting the stability of the largest players and are looking to up-and-coming smaller firms rather than the Big Tech monoliths,” Laurent Descout, CEO of Neo commented.
To read further commentary on the impact of the recent tech layoffs, click here.
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The students, who are aged between 14 and 18, came out top in the annual competition aiming to inspire Scottish schoolgirls to consider careers in investment management.
Participating teams had to research, analyse, and pitch companies they thought would be a lucrative long-term bet.
Kingussie’s senior (16-18) team — Gabi, Kirsty, Catrin, Zoe, and Sasha — delivered a pitch on TOMRA, the sorting and recycling company. The school’s junior (14-16) team — Lucy, Tia, and Jess — presented on SolarEdge, the renewable energy firm.
The teams’ pitches were made to separate panels of investment management professionals from companies including Baillie Gifford, Walter Scott and Partners, RBC Brewin Dolphin, Rathbones, Martin Currie, and BlackRock.
The Kingussie teams narrowly beat Clackmannanshire’s Alva Academy, whose team pitched John Deere in the senior category, and North Berwick High School, whose team pitched Planet Fitness in the juniors.
On the double win, Helen Bradley, Future Asset CEO, said: “This is an exceptional result for Kingussie High School. The fact that they have won both the junior and senior categories is outstanding.
“The judging panel were incredibly impressed with all of the entries but what really came across undeniably with both the teams from Kingussie High School was their ability to understand the key elements in making an investment decision which is exactly what this competition is all about.”
The competition is organised and run by Future Asset — the Scottish financial educators helping to nurture the next generation of female investment talent.
This year’s competition saw a rise in schools registering by 38%, meaning that almost one fifth of the region’s state schools got involved.
Chair of Future Asset, Senior Category judge, and former Partner at Baillie Gifford, Sarah Whitley, said: “This year was the third annual competition, and the standard of the submissions has got higher and higher with each year. Future Asset as an organisation cannot wait for these winners to enter the financial workforce!”
Initiatives like the competition are doing important work in helping to widen the talent pipeline and improve diversity in the male-dominated industry. According to research from the UK Business Angels Association, only 14% of angel investors in the UK are women, and only 7% have made investments in ten companies or more.
Having more women in investment — and especially in senior roles — would also help more women-led businesses to secure the necessary funding they need to establish themselves and then later scale.
The body’s guidance, which can be found here, provides key considerations for each stage of the product lifecycle — from kick-off through to research, development, design, launch, and post-launch.
In addition to offering must-follow practical steps for complying with data protection laws — including UK GDPR, which was (re)introduced last week by the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT) — the content also advises on what should and could be done by tech teams past the legal requirements.
In particular, ‘The case for privacy’ section of the guidance advocates for tech teams to seriously consider the broader impact and implications that a lack of care around data privacy and protection can have.
“Your organisation must comply with these [UK GDPR, DPA 2018, PECR] laws. But there are also pressing reasons beyond legal compliance to prioritise privacy,” the ICO wrote on the page. “Privacy also has real-world impacts on people’s rights and freedoms. Privacy-minded design will also benefit your organisation, reducing risks, saving time and expense, and ultimately helping you build better digital products.”
In addition to ICO’s new written content, the body has also released a selection of videos, taken from talks delivered as part of ICO’s ‘Privacy, Seriously’ event last month. These include keynotes and panels from data privacy experts, technologists, and designers. They can be viewed here.
The ICO’s guidance was also announced at the 23rd February event.
“The new guidance is part of the ICO’s commitment to helping organisations throughout the UK embed privacy in everything they do,” commented Stephen Almond, ICO Director of Technology, Innovation and Enterprise.
“Written in consultation with working technologists, it offers some certainty on what you must, should and could do to address privacy concerns in the product lifecycle. Beyond helping to comply with the law, we hope that these resources also emphasise the fundamental importance of privacy in our products and services.”
This latest guidance comes off the back of the body releasing a data-focused digital learning hub for SMEs in January. The creation of the hub was prompted by recent ICO research that uncovered 91% of people are worried about having their information sold to other companies without their consent, and 87% are worried about a company losing their personal information.
Moneycontrol, after allegedly speaking to people familiar with the matter and seeing an internal product brief, stated that it is set to be Instagram-branded, with users able to log in with their Instagram credentials.
However, further information about the product is currently unknown — and it’s not quite clear whether it’s simply an idea at this stage, or if development is already underway.
What has been shared, though, is P92 is set to be decentralised if it does come to fruition. Decentralised social networks, seeing as they operate on independently run servers rather than a centralised server owned by a business, offer users more control and autonomy of their data and content.
“We’re exploring a standalone decentralised social network for sharing text updates,” said a Meta spokesperson in a statement.
“We believe there’s an opportunity for a separate space where creators and public figures can share timely updates about their interests.”
The news comes as Elon Musk’s roughly $44 billion buyout of Twitter has continued to leave long-time users concerned about the platform’s longevity.
In response to Musk’s first few waves of changes — which has included the introduction of the Twitter Blue paid subscription service, and the winding down of its COVID-19 misleading information policy — Mastodon, the decentralised social media platform, experienced explosive growth at the end of 2022, as Twitter users sought an alternative social network.
The decentralised platform saw its user active user base climb from 380,000 to more than 2.5 million in December. However, the percentage of Mastodon’s monthly active users is apparently in decline after last year’s steep growth, highlighting that despite a desire to migrate, it isn’t currently meeting the broader needs of in-limbo Twitter users.
Significant changes have also been made when it comes to Twitter’s headcount. The company boasted around 7,500 employees in October 2022 — the figure is now just over 2,000. This sharp reduction has been inferred by some as the reason underpinning Twitter’s recent spat of outages.
Twitter aside, the fact that Meta is potentially considering building a decentralised, text-based social media platform underscores the potential for decentralised platforms to be adopted by a broader user base — and how big-name tech giants like Meta can get involved.
The initial surge in Mastodon user growth proved that, intellectually, there is an appetite for decentralised platforms outside of the Web3 community — or, it doesn’t dissuade users from signing up, at least.
Could Meta’s Twitter rival product, if it does get built and shipped, be the product that brings decentralised social media to the masses?
While this sizeable increase reflects that the sector is in its early stages, the report underscored that adoption will be largely driven by governments seeking to leverage CBDC to increase control over how digital payments are made, and to augment financial inclusion among its citizens.
The research also highlighted that domestic payments are set to account for 92% of CBDCs by 2030. Considering that, as of 2023, the percentage of domestic payments for CBDC pilots is nearly 100%, this will be a drop of roughly 8%. North America, Western Europe, and China have been outlined by the reports’ authors to be the geographies that will be most instrumental in driving CBDC usage and transactions.
Seeing as central banks issue CBDCs, they will be closely targeted to domestic payment challenges initially, with cross-border payments coming later, as systems become established and links are made between CBDCs used by individual countries.
Nick Maynard, one of the report’s authors, explained: “While cross-border payments currently have high costs and slow transaction speeds, this area is not the focus of CBDC development.
“As CBDC adoption will be very country specific, it will be incumbent on cross-border payment networks to link schemes together; allowing the wider payments industry to benefit from CBDCs.”
In terms of key limiting factors for the current market, the report highlighted the lack of commercial product development, as well as too few well-defined platforms for central banks to leverage.
In order to truly realise the potential of CBDCs, the report advocates for prospective CBDC platform providers to develop a full end-to-end solution, including wholesale capabilities, wallet provision, and merchant acceptance.
Around this time last month, DIGIT reported on the UK Treasury’s suggestion that “Britcoin” — Britain’s state-backed CBDC — wouldn’t arrive before 2025.
Now-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak asked the Bank of England to look into backing a digital currency back in 2021, when he served as chancellor.
Defending the Enterprise: The Latest Trends and Tactics in BEC Attacks, conducted by Osterman Research, examined survey responses from around 250 U.S. IT and security professionals regarding BEC — a type of phishing attack with the goal of stealing money or critical information from an organisation by misleading its employees.
Among its key findings, the report explicitly underscores the growing anxiety surrounding BEC attempts, as threat actors leverage new channels to lay the foundations for successful — and potentially dire — BEC attacks. In the UK alone, BEC incidents cost firms £138 million in losses, according to Infosecurity Magazine.
Specifically, large organisations’ perceived threat of BEC attacks is set to increase by 43.3% over the next 12 months, the research found. This figure not only represents a year-on-year increase, but it’s also twice as high as the threat of phishing in general.
Large organisations, i.e. organisations with over 10,000 employees, have the most variables to control — and also the most to lose; from substantial sums of cash to highly-sensitive data, as well as intellectual property.
The report highlighted that the groups most targeted by BEC attacks are finance employees and C-level executives, due to their close proximity to company finances and the authority they wield.
The 43.3% spike in perceived threat is by no means unfounded, of course: 93% of organisations experienced one or more of the BEC attack variants over the last 12 months, with 62% facing three or more attacks over this time, the report disclosed.
Additionally, the most common variant of BEC attack was found to be fake invoices (20.2%), followed by data theft (19.7%), account takeover (18%), payroll diversion (12.7%), gift card scams (12.3%), CEO fraud (10.4%), and attorney impersonation (4.5%).
Further, new channels — or “precursors” — are being utilised to exploit unsuspecting employees and organisations. While spear phishing email messages remain the most frequent channel used (40% of respondents said these are used either “almost every time” or “every time”), it’s quickly followed by fraudulent SMS messages (36%), fraudulent connection requests on social media (27%), and fraudulent phone calls (22%).
While organisations arm themselves with a slew of protective measures — including security awareness training, secure email gateways (SEGs), multi-factor authentication, and phishing simulation testing — the report suggests that many of these approaches have questionable efficacy.
For instance, security awareness training is generally offered too infrequently to be valuable, and while secure email gateways are indeed crucial for thwarting traditional phishing attacks by identifying malicious content, BEC attacks seek to weaponise intent rather than attachments or links.
So that organisations can be more robust in their defence against BEC attacks, one particular tool that the report advocates for is A.I.-powered anti-phishing tech.
While 55% of organisations are apparently already using such technology, its ability to identify malicious intent — which can be overlooked by SEGs — can be particularly advantageous. Additionally, the inherent continuous learning capabilities of contemporary A.I. anti-phishing tech means that its ability to detect advanced BEC threats is greatly improved.
“The findings of this report should leave no doubt as to the scope and severity of today’s business email compromise problem,” said Audian Paxson, Director of Technical Product Marketing at IRONSCALES.
“And yet, we find that many organisations remain ill-equipped to defend against this rising threat. The continued reliance on legacy email security solutions, such as SEGs, places organisations at significant risk.
“This report drives home the need for organizations to re-examine their approach to BEC security, by incorporating AI-enabled solutions that work in concert with regular phishing simulation testing and security awareness training. Employees should be part of the solution, not a liability.”
As a circular economy company, CuanTec — which has R&D labs in Oban — uses innovative tech to create new materials from natural resources, thereby reducing waste, pollution, and carbon emissions.
The biotech firm’s new separation plant has been leased at the premises of the Fife Food & Business Centre on the Southfield Industrial Estate. Here, CuanTec will take advantage of shellfish waste — which would otherwise be incinerated — to extract chitin. Chitin is a naturally occurring biopolymer found in the exoskeletons and shells of a range of organisms, and has a multitude of applications in industries including pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.
The company utilises chitin for its bio-based film — a product designed to replace single-use plastics.
CuanTec’s decision to choose Glenrothes as its new manufacturing base is said to be creating around 20 “green” jobs, with the likes of Fife Council Economic Development and Business Gateway Fife supporting CuanTec’s move to inwardly invest and generate more green jobs for the region.
CuanTec has also received assistance from Scottish Enterprise’s Green Jobs Fund — a funding initiative to help businesses create jobs that contribute to improving the environment and reaching net-zero emissions.
“We are delighted to be in Glenrothes and see Fife as our future long-term manufacturing base from which every stream of the process can be managed,” said CEO of CuanTec, Craig Sterling, regarding the news.
“Thank you to Fife Council Economic Development who have given us invaluable help and support. We highly recommend their team who are driven to bring green jobs to Fife along with the expertise of Economic Development, Business Gateway Fife, and their many teams who will provide more useful engagement for us as we recruit locally as a green employer in Fife.
“I would also like to thank Scottish Enterprise and their significant support for CuanTec.”
Councillor Altany Craik, Fife Council Spokesperson for Finance, Economy & Strategic Planning, also commented, saying: “CuanTec’s arrival is fantastic news for Fife.
“We very much welcome the creation of green employment opportunities from a vibrant sustainable biotech business which has a product with the potential to change the way the world looks at packaging.
“CuanTec tick all the boxes for us in terms of innovation and support of the circular economy. They are to be commended for creating a truly exciting business with global ambition.”
The Pre-Scaler programme has been launched in partnership with Scottish EDGE, who run a competition for innovative Scottish entrepreneurs looking for funding and support.
Pre-Scaler will see entrepreneurs experience a series of online and in-person events aiming to accelerate business growth and scalability. This complements THF’s ScaleUpScotland core and 2.0 programmes, which DIGIT has previously reported on.
The developmental events are set to kick off with a core module on fundraising, valuation, and cost of capital, followed by modules on people planning, leadership, sales, and marketing. Further, board and governance training is planned to be delivered by THF’s ScaleUp programme partners, including David Sole’s School for CEOs.
“Scaling businesses move the economic dial and we need to do more to support those with that ambition to accelerate their growth in a managed way,” said Sir Tom Hunter, THF’s founder, regarding the programme’s launch.
“Importantly this will be delivered by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs – people who know the pain, pitfalls and opportunities building a scalable business brings.
“We have seen through our support for Scottish EDGE that those with real ambition frankly need a lot more support than is on offer or available hence Pre-Scaler.”
Evelyn McDonald, CEO of Scottish Edge, added: “Scottish EDGE is delighted to be partnering with the Hunter Foundation to deliver this programme aimed at growing businesses.
“We know from experience that our businesses need more than just cash in their journey to scale and this series of workshops aims to help them with their development.”
While Scottish EDGE-backed businesses are encouraged to apply, Pre-Scaler is open to any ambitious entrepreneur running a business that they’d like to scale. The programme is sector agnostic.
Interested entrepreneurs should submit a two-minute, iPhone-quality video to scaleup@thehunterfoundation.co.uk covering their business; revenue from the past year; ambition in five years’ time and any plans to fundraise. Applications close March 24th.
Up to twenty pre-scaling businesses will be selected for the first cohort by four judges: Chris van der Kuyl, Principal of Chroma Ventures; Ana Stewart, Partner at EOS Advisory; Evelyn McDonald, CEO of Scottish EDGE, and Ewan Hunter, CEO of THF.
Participating entrepreneurs can expect to commit up to 5 days in total to the programme — which will be hosted at THF’s Ayrshire headquarters at Blair Castle — starting in May this year. Pre-Scaler will conclude in September, where they will have the option to pitch to a panel of potential investors.
A trusted AWS Partner, Dundee-headquartered Brightsolid designs, builds, and manages secure and scalable cloud environments for its customers.
As the Scots tech firm’s new CTO, Sinclair brings over a decade of technical experience across engineering, architecture, and transformation. Sinclair made the move over from iomart — the Glasgow-based cloud computing and IT managed services business — where he served as its Head of Product.
“I’m thrilled to join Brightsolid as it enters its next phase of growth,” Sinclair said on his appointment.
“I was drawn by the opportunity to deliver a compelling managed cloud solution to the market, but what really stood out to me was Brightsolid’s incredible internal culture, which places such high value on our people and our relationships with customers.”
Brightsolid’s new Head of Cyber Security, David Taylor, started his tech career in the military, spending over a decade onboard Britain’s nuclear submarines managing their communications and information systems.
Over the last ten years David has been building and managing Security Operations Centres, securing cloud and on-premises infrastructure, and conducting information security and compliance audits.
“As well as a market leading MDR [managed detection and response] product Brightsolid has an amazing culture which I am very excited to be part of,” Taylor commented.
“I can’t wait to work with the team to further develop our managed cyber security offering while continuing to deliver our fantastic levels of customer service.”
For Elaine Maddison, the CEO of Brightsolid, these latest appointments are a key part of the company’s strategy. “I’m absolutely delighted that both Andy and Dave have decided to join Brightsolid. We want to attract the best talent out there and that’s exactly what we’ve done here,” she said.
“We’re an ambitious business and both Andy and Dave bring unrivalled expertise and experience to drive our growth plans.”
With its ‘digital twin’ technology, IES is set to help Eaton’s customers make their buildings energy efficient, and assess scope for EV charging infrastructure, energy storage, and renewable generation technologies.
A digital twin is a virtual replica of a real-world physical object or environment, allowing simulations to be run so that issues can be identified and improvements made.
In this instance, the climate tech firm can analyse the cost, benefits, and impact of various efficiency measures, identifying those that will be most effective at improving a building’s energy efficiency and de-risking investments.
In combination with Eaton’s power management expertise, the offering can provide building owners with high-performance, data-backed strategies to decarbonise buildings, improve energy efficiency, and drive down energy costs in the process.
The partnership is the latest in a series of collaborations for IES — including with multinational energy supplier SSE — as the company acts on its goal of driving energy efficiency in the built environment.
Just last week, DIGIT reported on how the Scots company’s digital twin of Pollok County Park is aiding Glasgow City Council in its efforts to reach net zero by 2030. The digital twin is being utilised to help stakeholders understand where and how energy is being used and generated, and to mitigate the estate’s emissions.
“This is a momentous partnership for IES,” said Don McLean, founder and CEO of IES.
“Working with a business the size of Eaton, with customers in over 170 countries, will allow us to reach far more building owners in need of data-driven, tangible roadmaps to meet net zero and navigate the energy transition.
“Digital twins will be at the centre of our work with Eaton and arm customers with the knowledge, building usage data and model that they need to make informed building decisions. There’s a lot more to come from this partnership, with further opportunities in the pipeline and an exciting future ahead.”
Delphine Clement, the commercial and industrial buildings segment leader at Eaton in EMEA, also commented on the partnership, saying: “IES’s expertise will enable us to offer even more to our customers, demonstrating how their buildings will perform before and during their energy transition journey.
“Utilising the digital twin technology, it will be possible to forecast the energy savings and payback periods of various applications of our Buildings as a Grid approach. This aims to transform buildings into energy hubs that support EV charging and renewable energy generation to save on energy bills and ensure properties comply with net-zero regulations.”
The new UK data laws — co-designed with industry and privacy partners, including Which? and TechUK — will “reduce costs and burdens for British businesses and charities, remove barriers to international trade, and cut the number of repetitive data collection pop-ups online,” the government has said ahead of Donelan’s introduction.
Today’s introduction to the bill, however, is something of a reintroduction: The bill was first introduced in the summer of last year, but progress was halted in September so that ministers could re-examine the legislation.
The government has claimed the the bill will:
Introduce a simple, clear and business-friendly framework that will not be difficult or costly to implement – taking the best elements of the GDPR and providing businesses with more flexibility about how they comply with the new data laws.
Ensure the new regime maintains data adequacy with the EU, and wider international confidence in the UK’s comprehensive data protection standards.
Further reduce the amount of paperwork organisations need to complete to demonstrate compliance.
Support even more international trade without creating extra costs for businesses if they’re already compliant with current data regulation.
Provide organisations with greater confidence about when they can process personal data without consent.
Increase public and business confidence in AI technologies by clarifying the circumstances when robust safeguards apply to automated decision-making.
The Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology’s (DSIT) reforms “are expected to unlock £4.7 billion in savings for the UK economy over the next 10 years and maintain the UK’s internationally renowned data protection standards so businesses can continue to trade freely with global partners, including the EU,” the government said.
Over 2021, data-driven trade drove an estimated £259 billion for the economy, while generating 85% of the UK’s total service exports.
On the bill, Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan has said: “Co-designed with business from the start, this new Bill ensures that a vitally important data protection regime is tailored to the UK’s own needs and our customs.”
“Our system will be easier to understand, easier to comply with, and take advantage of the many opportunities of post-Brexit Britain. No longer will our businesses and citizens have to tangle themselves around the barrier-based European GDPR,” she said. “Our new laws release British businesses from unnecessary red tape to unlock new discoveries, drive forward next generation technologies, create jobs and boost our economy.”
The reduction of data-related paperwork that UK organisations will need to fill out is mentioned as one of the highlights that the new GDPR-replacing bill will bring.
“The existing European version of GDPR takes a highly prescriptive, top-down approach to data protection regulation which can limit organisations’ flexibility to manage risks and places disproportionate burdens on small businesses,” the government said ahead of Donelan’s introduction.
“Ministers have improved the Bill to further cut down on the amount of paperwork organisations need to complete to show compliance. Now, only organisations whose processing activities are likely to pose high risks to individual’s rights and freedoms will need to keep processing records.
“The new rules will give organisations more clarity about when they can process personal data without needing consent or weighing up their own interests in processing the data against an individual’s rights for certain public interest activities.”
The government’s also suggested that the bill will better enable academics and commercial organisations to reuse data for scientific research, increase public and business confidence in AI technologies, and further support international data sharing.
The Digital Evidence Sharing Capability service (DESC) — a secure and robust system that will for the first time allow prosecutors, court staff, police officers, and defence lawyers to access a unified system to handle evidence digitally — has recently begun being piloted in Dundee.
DESC handles evidence including CCTV footage, photographs, data, and other materials from computers and mobile devices. This will be expanded to include documents and recordings of police interviews.
Digital evidence – such as material recorded on mobile phones — will be more easily submitted by members of the public and businesses. It can be done via email, after being sent a link by a police officer.
Benefits of the system include reducing the impact on victims and witnesses by supporting quicker resolution of cases, as well as reducing the workloads of police officers. Further, it will significantly reduce the need to transport physical evidence, supporting wider carbon reduction efforts.
A nationwide roll out of DESC is planned for later this year.
“This is a significant milestone in our overhaul of how evidence is managed through Scotland’s justice system,” said Justice Secretary Keith Brown on the initiative.
“From crime scene to courtroom, DESC will allow victims and others involved in criminal cases to move on with their lives sooner and free up officers’ time to focus more on frontline policing,” he said. “No other country in the world has invested in a digital evidence solution which serves each part of the criminal justice system equally.”
“The Scottish Government has invested £33 million in this innovative, secure and environmentally sustainable project, which also highlights the successful collaboration of justice partners. Already the pilot – which began in January – is proving extremely successful, with 600 cases handled and a guilty plea in a case involving digital evidence,” said Brown.
“We welcome the introduction of DESC which is expected to enable fast, secure digital evidence sharing across the criminal justice system,” said Police Scotland Assistant Chief Constable Wendy Middleton.
“Police Scotland is working closely alongside its criminal justice partners to maximise the potential of this technology which aims to improve everyone’s experiences of criminal justice and enable further modernisation in the future,” said Middleton.
The State of Equity and Ownership 2023 report — which surveyed 1,200 employees, executives, and founders across the US, UK, France, and Germany — found that two-thirds (64%) of founders are aiming to make their equity plans more generous this year. Further, three times more founders spent “a lot of time” on employee equity when fundraising.
The data underscored the impact that the fundraising and valuation slowdown has had on tech companies: compared to last year, fewer founders secured external investment successfully. A majority of founders across the UK, US, France, and Germany (51%) had not raised money from investors in the previous 12 months, compared to 43% in 2022.
When it comes to the UK specifically, however, 51% of founders raised external capital in the last 12 months — its long-standing venture capital (VC) industry with greater depth and liquidity giving companies more fundraising opportunities and confidence than France and Germany.
While UK tech firms reined in more external investment than the two EU countries — but also less than the US — Ledgy’s latest research has also uncovered that 1 in 4 UK founders give 15% or less of all equity to employees.
Similarly, 1 in 3 UK companies use a tax-optimised share plan to provide employees with equity stakes. Tax-optimised plans, which require in-depth discussion with tax authorities and greater overhead for finance and legal teams, is a key indicator of the relative equity maturity in different ecosystems.
Despite the US being something of an employee equity superpower (47% of U.S. founders give 15% or less of all equity to employees, for instance) — and is followed by the UK — the data shows that EU countries are catching up as employee equity becomes more desirable in the current investment climate.
Ledgy’s co-founder and CEO, Yoko Spirig, commented on the report, saying: “Despite the tech ecosystem coming back down to earth over the past year, there is still an enormous amount of innovation happening and equity trends are moving in the right direction. Tech firms are doubling down on equity because they recognise that incentivising talent with a stake in the business is one of the best levers to align everyone behind the mission and vision through tougher times.
“Equity in Europe used to be a case of maybe getting a decent chunk of share options in a London startup, and not much on offer elsewhere. Our data shows that this is no longer the case. Although there is more to do, we are now seeing startups in markets like France and Germany establishing progressive equity plans that could give employees transformative ownership in leading companies.
“But Europe is still lagging behind the United States on critical metrics like how widely equity is distributed across the team, and how much of the company’s equity is allocated to employees. We have seen some positive grassroots campaigns trying to change things in Europe, but more government support and cross-jurisdiction standardization of share option plans is needed to make equity in Europe as exciting and well-understood as equity in the US.
“Taking the temperature of equity and ownership across four important markets has been a fascinating exercise and we are already excited to see how the tech sector evolves in the next 12 months.”
Established in 2014 to advance Industrial Biotechnology (IB) in Scotland, IBioIC is a key driver of Scotland’s National Plan for IB, facilitating collaboration, providing scale-up capabilities, creating networks, and developing skills and training provisions.
Annelie joins IBioIC from Ethicon — the Johnson & Johnson subsidiary focusing on surgical technologies — where she was responsible for business development and managing sales.
She also has a background in biochemistry and microbiology, bringing experience from previous roles with Medtronic UK and Nikon. In these positions, she focused on biological imaging systems for biotech companies, universities, and the NHS.
In her new senior business engagement manager role at IBioIC, Annelie will help businesses in the Highlands and Islands to develop and adopt biotechnology processes and products across the food and drink, textiles, and marine sectors.
She will work closely with Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) — the region’s development agency — to support businesses with research and development, and raise awareness of the funding opportunities available to them.
The Highlands and Islands region is a core focus for IBioIC, with its unique landscape providing an abundance of natural resources, such as seaweed and timber. Recently, the Innovation Centre secured a £99,000 grant from the Marine Scotland Fund to boost its seaweed processing capabilities.
On the appointment, Annelie said: “I’m excited to join IBioIC and bring the benefits of industrial biotechnology to more businesses in the Highlands and Islands.
“The innovation centre’s network presents lots of opportunities to build a greener Scotland and connecting relevant research teams with industry partners can help take that one step further.
“The timing is also ideal as we look ahead to our annual conference in March, which will be a valuable opportunity to connect with our members in-person and collaborate towards net zero targets.”
CEO of IBioIC, Mark Bustard, also commented: “Annelie is an excellent addition to the business engagement team.
“Having managed a number of projects within the medtech industry, her experience lends itself well to some of the key sectors in the Highlands and Islands, including life sciences and marine biotech.
“We look forward to working with her as we continue to grow the bioeconomy in Scotland, helping companies to embrace new technologies and processes.”
Annelie’s appointment comes five months after Andrew Bowen, who’s ex-Oxford University Innovation, also joined IBioIC as a senior business engagement manager, and is responsible for setting up and leading the Biotech Innovators Accelerator programmes.
It was also announced last month that the total investment of IBioIC and its partners in green skills — supporting both biotech research initiatives and Scotland’s transition to net zero — had reached £25m.
The research — which was conducted by Mortar Research for Samsung, and posed a series of questions to over 2,000 women aged 18 to 25 — discovered that two thirds (67%) of the respondents are considering a career in tech.
However, nearly all of them (91%) say there are barriers to even considering a role in the industry.
Whether it’s not understanding enough about the sector (44%), not having the right tech qualifications (30%), or fear of it being too challenging (23%), women are seeing alternative routes such as careers in HR, marketing and finance as their way ‘in’ to working in the industry (38%).
Starting in schools
The research makes clear that Gen-Z women are intrigued by tech, with respondents describing the sector as “exciting” (52%), “innovative” (55%), and “cool” (41%), compared to just 5% who said it was “boring.” Additionally, artificial intelligence and machine learning prove compelling, with 36% finding advancements in this area exciting.
That said, the school system appears to be failing to inspire and advocate for women to enter the tech workforce. One third of respondents (34%) said they didn’t learn enough about tech at school, and 22% even reported that they were steered away from subjects relevant to the tech industry at school or college by their teachers.
On this, Annika Bizon, Marketing and Omnichannel Director at Samsung UK, said: “Technological innovation is front and centre and instead of being put off, or tuning out of the conversation, Gen-Z are actively engaged in these developments.
“With growing excitement, the next question is how can employers and educators break down the barriers to entry and facilitate action to close the gap between intention and action?
“We must be the ones to rally together, to enable the next generation to take practical steps to pursue meaningful careers.”
Role models are essential
According to a third (33%) of respondents, having more women in the industry would make tech a more compelling career choice.
The lack of female tech role models is underscored by how few people could name a prominent woman in tech — a stat that Tanya Weller, Marketing Director at Samsung UK and Ireland, says is getting worse.
“In 2017, a [PwC UK] report revealed that 78% of UK students couldn’t name a famous woman working in technology. Today, this figure is worse, with 92% of 18–25-year-old women saying that they cannot name a famous woman in the industry versus 46% that can name a prominent man in tech.
“There is clearly appetite from young women to pursue a career in tech, but we all need to step up to help these women realise their ambitions – it’s the combined effort of schools, universities, and workplaces to actively break down barriers, and support and inspire the next generation of talent into a thriving career in tech.
“We need robust role models that the young women of tomorrow can look up to as a source of inspiration, to stop and think ‘I can do that too’. Or perhaps even, ‘I can do better.’”
Greater female representation is key
Some of the study’s respondents (12%) incorrectly thought that This Morning TV presenter Alison Hammond was a woman in tech. This was followed by current Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon (9%), Charli Emma Aitchison – aka the musician Charlie XCX (8%), and British tennis player Emma Raducanu (6%) as prominent women in the sector.
Only 14% correctly identified Ada Lovelace as a woman in tech. This is despite the fact Ada Lovelace is largely known as the first computer programmer — and even has an awareness day dedicated to her, “Ada Lovelace Day,” which is held every October.
This points to the need for greater female representation in the sector.
Sharmadean Reid, founder of The Stack World — a network for women leaders, founders, and entrepreneurs — commented: “We all have a place in tech. Working in tech isn’t just about being able to code – it’s about so much more. Tech is home to diverse people with eclectic experiences in design, computer science, linguistics, humanities, history and much more.
“Paths are being formed, but what’s clear is that we need more visible female role models in the industry that inspire the next generation to take those life-defining first steps.”
In an attempt to tackle some of these challenges, there have been numerous programmes delivered in Scotland in recent months that have aimed to get more female students interested in tech, as well as getting more women inside the industry.
Held at the University of Strathclyde’s Technology and Innovation Centre and online, the Scottish AI Summit will have attendees from across academia, industry, and the public sector coming together to explore the current and potential impact of AI technologies on society.
Over the course of two days, the event will feature keynote speeches, discussion panels, and workshops across 3 stages, as well as roundtable sessions on a wide range of subjects and interactive demonstrations of AI tools.
The Scottish AI Summit is organised and delivered by the Scottish AI Alliance — a stakeholder group tasked with the delivery of the actions outlined in Scotland’s AI Strategy in an open, transparent, and collaborative way.
This March’s event (28th-29th) is the second Scottish AI Summit to come from the Scottish AI Alliance, with its inaugural event taking place in Edinburgh last year.
Steph Wright, Head of the Scottish AI Alliance, said: “The Summit’s all about people joining the conversation, finding out about the amazing work going on in Scotland and helping us on our journey to become a leader in trustworthy, ethical and inclusive AI. We have experts from all over the world here to join in that conversation.”
Speakers for this year’s keynotes include Toju Duke, Responsible AI Programme Manager at Google, Catriona Campbell, Client Technology & Innovation Officer at EY, Viktoria Prantauer, a patient advocate and AI entrepreneur, and Lex Fefegha of COMUZI, a creative professional working with digital and AI. They will be joined remotely by Gary Marcus, scientist and author.
Additionally, the 2023 Summit will feature partner organisations, including The National Robotarium, which has recently opened its doors as an advanced applied research facility for robotics and artificial intelligence. They will be bringing along a selection of robots to meet the delegates.
Jisc, the UK’s body for digital technology and digital resources in higher education, further education and research will also be in attendance, with a selection of interactive demos showcasing AI-powered technologies.
Community partners at the Summit include Data Kirk, who are working to change the face of Scotland’s future talent pool by increasing representation of disadvantaged groups working in data, as well as Code Your Future, which helps refugees and disadvantaged people get started in careers in tech.
DressCode, a non-profit charity founded with the aim of addressing the gender gap in Computing Science, will also join them for the two-day event, as will Equate Scotland, who champion and support gender equality in STEM sectors.
DIGIT readers interested in attending this year’s event can receive 10% off their tickets by applying the code DIGIT10 at the checkout here.
The Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology’s new “Science and Technology Framework” is set to drive the UK’s science and tech innovation efforts forward — especially regarding quantum, AI, engineering biology, semiconductors, future telecoms plus life sciences and green technologies — through 10 key actions.
These 10 actions aim to “foster the right conditions for industry innovation and world leading scientific research to deliver high-paid jobs of the future, grow the economy in cutting-edge industries, and improve people’s lives from better healthcare to security.”
The Science and Technology Framework’s 10 actions focus on:
Identifying, pursuing and achieving strategic advantage in the technologies that are most critical to achieving UK objectives
Showcasing the UK’s S&T strengths and ambitions at home and abroad to attract talent, investment and boost our global influence
Boosting private and public investment in research and development for economic growth and better productivity
Building on the UK’s already enviable talent and skills base
Financing innovative science and technology start-ups and companies
Capitalising on the UK government’s buying power to boost innovation and growth through public sector procurement
Shaping the global science and tech landscape through strategic international engagement, diplomacy and partnerships
Ensuring researchers have access to the best physical and digital infrastructure for R&D that attracts talent, investment and discoveries
Leveraging post-Brexit freedoms to create world-leading pro-innovation regulation and influence global technical standards
Creating a pro-innovation culture throughout the UK’s public sector to improve the way our public services run
With the £370 million-plus in funding, capital is said to be rolled out to the following areas and projects: £250 million for AI, quantum, and engineering biology technologies; a £50 million uplift to the World Class Labs funding scheme for research infrastructure; up to £50 million to encourage co-investment in science from the private sector; and an additional £10 million for the UK Innovation and Science Seed Fund, among others. There’s also the previously announced £117 million for new PhD AI researchers.
On the growth push — which is a cross-government endeavour — Sunak said: “Trailblazing science and innovation have been in our DNA for decades. But in an increasingly competitive world, we can only stay ahead with focus, dynamism and leadership.
“That’s why we’re setting out 10 key actions under a bold new plan to cement our place as a global science and technology superpower by 2030 – from pursuing transformational technologies like AI and supercomputing to attracting top talent and ensuring they have the tools they need to succeed.
“The more we innovate, the more we can grow our economy, create the high-paid jobs of the future, protect our security, and improve lives across the country.”
Donelan also commented, saying: “Innovation and technology are our future. They hold the keys to everything from raising productivity and wages, to transforming healthcare, reducing energy prices and ultimately creating jobs and economic growth in the UK, providing the financial firepower allowing us to spend more on public services.
“That is why, today, we are putting the full might of the British government and our private sector partners behind our push to become a scientific and technological superpower, because only through being world-leaders in future industries like AI and quantum will we be able to improve the lives of every Briton.”
In addition to the plan, the UK government also announced today that it has extended the Horizon Europe Guarantee scheme for UK applicants — an R&D funding initiative after Britain’s access to Horizon Europe, the EU R&D programme, was caught in the crossfire of Brexit — to the end of June 2023.
Tomb, a former Google executive, joined Zoom in June 2022 to oversee its go-to-market strategy, revenue efforts, and office of the Global CIO. He had reported directly to Eric Yuan, the company’s CEO.
Upon his employment, Tomb had been given a $45 million stock grant, as well as a $400,000 yearly base salary with an 8% bonus target, according to Bloomberg.
The SEC filing states that “Mr. Tomb will receive the severance benefits payable in accordance with his previously disclosed employment arrangements that are payable upon a ‘termination without cause.’”
The news comes just weeks after the American company announced that it was cutting around 1,300 jobs — roughly 15% of its workforce — citing a post-pandemic change in consumer behaviour and an uncertain global economy.
In the February layoffs announcement, Yuan also stated that he was reducing his salary for the fiscal year by 98%, as well as foregoing his corporate bonus.
Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom became a household name, with people relying on the platform in both their personal and professional lives. This led the company to experience rapid growth both in terms of revenue and headcount; in 2021, the company announced that its revenues had risen 326% year-over-year to $2.6bn. It also grew 3x in size to meet the surge in user demand.
However, the company’s growth proved unsustainable when Zoom — like many big name tech companies, including Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, and Salesforce — became victim to a post-COVID slump, letting many employees go as a result.
A Zoom spokesperson, according to Bloomberg, has said that the company isn’t looking to find a replacement for Tomb at this time.
The latest Scottish Business Monitor report — produced in partnership with international law firm Addleshaw Goddard — has analysed the past 25 years of Scottish business activity, using historic and contemporary data to highlight trends, changes, and concerns.
One of the Monitor’s key findings regards investment: low levels of business investment have been a longstanding feature of the Scottish economy for many years.
Data shows that for seventeen consecutive quarters between 2017 and 2021, the net balance of firms reporting an increase in capital investment was negative, falling to -44% in Q2 2020. While the situation improved across mid-2021 and 2022, the figures dipped back down to -6% in Q3 2022, then -15% in Q4 2022.
“The performance of capital investment is concerning given that when we look across national statistics business investment rates in Scotland are already lower than the UK overall’s and significantly lower than many developed economies,” the report stated.
“Business investment and export activity are key drivers of productivity and economic growth therefore, years of poor performance across both indicators is concerning for the longer-term outlook of the economy.”
While the report found that cost-of-living, cost-of-doing-business, and energy crises have added numerous pressures, it also discovered that they’ve propelled businesses to take action — underscoring resiliency.
In Q4 2022, 90% of firms surveyed had seen costs increase — with just under half saying that, due to higher energy bills, they expected to reduce operations in 2023.
However, the latest quarterly results found that businesses are increasingly taking steps to tackle the current energy crisis, with more than 60% of firms saying that the crisis has encouraged them to speed up energy-efficient improvements.
This mirrors the push that COVID-19 gave many businesses with regards to digitalisation: At the start of 2022, the Institute found that 40% of businesses agreed that the pandemic had accelerated their plans to make a major part of their business model digital.
On the latest Scottish Business Monitor, Professor Mairi Spowage, Director of the Fraser of Allander Institute, said: “Scottish firms have had to weather a number of storms over the past 25 years, and their resilience is once again being tested as they navigate through the current cost-of-doing-business crisis.
“Concerningly, our latest findings show consistently low levels of export activity and business investment, which are key drivers of productivity. While business resilience has been shown time and time again, Scottish businesses need support to secure longer-term business and economic growth.”
Alan Shanks, Head of Scotland at Addleshaw Goddard, also commented, saying: “This is a fascinating report that demonstrates in detail how Scottish businesses have coped with unprecedented technological change and economic upheaval over the past 25 years.
“The Scottish Business Monitor launched in the same year I began my legal career and having worked closely with Scottish businesses of all sizes throughout this period I have seen first-hand the collective strength they have shown. The Scottish business community will need to show continued resilience to deal with the numerous uncertainties currently facing it.
“This kind of analysis is crucial to understanding the long-term direction of travel of the Scottish economy and identify the key challenges and opportunities for our businesses – which policymakers, investors and advisers including Addleshaw Goddard can then help them meet head on.”
While the Monitor’s findings show that investment has been weak for Scottish businesses generally, other data indicates that Scotland’s tech sector seems to be faring better in this area. Scottish Development International says that digital tech is Scotland’s fastest-growing sector for inward investment. Additionally, according to Beauhurst, nearly one third (28%) of Scotland’s high-growth businesses are technology companies.
The research — which gathered qualitative data from over 600 women in technology industry leaders — highlights how the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis have acted as major barriers towards women’s success in tech.
In terms of statistics, more than half (52%) of respondents believed women missed out on work opportunities, were forced to scale down work and take time-off to care for children, as well as undertaking more household chores during the pandemic and economically-challenging times.
This is despite broader efforts by businesses to help support the women they employ.
Additionally, almost half (43%) perceive women as shouldering most of the burden of childcare or care of other dependents in their households whilst juggling work responsibilities. A further 43% believe women are more likely than men to have been denied access to business-related financial support from governments.
A lack of funding for women in tech
The survey’s data also provided insights regarding the issue of funding and money for women in tech. According to City A.M., women-led businesses on average receive 96% less funding than businesses led by men.
Having a greater number of women-focused business events and awards is perceived as one of the most powerful initiatives which has helped women-led startups get improved access to funding over the last two years, the survey found. This is closely followed by more women in tech being championed in the press (55%).
However, 42% of respondents believed it was more difficult for women to secure a pay rise in tech, whilst 38% said it was more difficult for women to achieve senior leadership or board positions.
What are the solutions?
To tackle these challenges, respondents said they would like to see better visibility and promotion of STEM career opportunities for women to help them break into and then thrive in the tech industry.
This would help achieve greater gender equity in the sector (39% of respondents revealed), as well as more equal pay between genders (38%), and better flexible work opportunities (37%).
Laura Stebbing, CEO of EQL:HER — a global network and event series for women in technology — said: “Despite the efforts of many businesses and organisations towards gender parity in the tech sector, there is still lots more to be done. Women for example are far behind men when it comes to investment in women led startups.
“Gender disparity needs to be addressed from a systemic level. Supporting women at just one level is not going to solve the problems. We need to be looking at early-stage solutions including better investment in STEM, high profile women in tech being visible to young people and better access to skills programmes.
“It can’t be just one of these interventions, it needs to be all of them. Society shapes stereotypes and creates biases that we need to address well before women even enter the workforce.”
London Tech Week ambassador and founder of Olio, Tessa Clarke, also commented: “If there’s one industry that should be leading in terms of gender parity, it’s the tech industry.
“That’s because the tech industry has the tools to enable flexible and autonomous working, it has the dynamism and relative youth to make change more easily, and it naturally attracts the visionaries and disruptors who don’t tend to be happy with the status quo.
“It’s therefore incredibly disappointing to see this data which shows that the industry has not yet seized the gender parity opportunity.
I very much hope that this International Women’s Day the tech industry will resolve to make proper strides in gender parity, so we won’t be lamenting the same lack of progress next year.”
The Scottish Government-commissioned report has underlined the various obstacles women in Scotland face for entering and then flourishing in entrepreneurship. The report is set to be discussed by a group of leading female business figures next Wednesday.
The contract was given to the Scots firm as part of the Council’s efforts to embrace a long-term approach to infrastructure and connectivity, in line with its digital strategy. It involves replacing its ageing Wide Area Network (WAN) with full-fibre infrastructure, which will give communities across Northumberland access to faster, higher-quality, and more reliable connectivity.
To deliver on the contract, Commsworld will provide 262km of new fibre infrastructure to nearly 150 Northumberland council sites, granting roughly 120,000 residential and business properties with Fibre To The Premises (FTTP). It’s said that many of these residents and businesses have never had access to gigabit-capable fibre networks before.
Commsworld will be facilitating the service over a 20-year period, but by 2026 the planned installation of a 262km cable will transform connectivity to nearly 150 council sites and enable access to more than 120,000 residential and business properties to Fibre To The Premises (FTTP), many of which have never had access to gigabit-capable fibre networks before.
Northumberland’s updated infrastructure will be linked to Commsworld’s Optical Core Network (OCN) — a next-generation network, built specifically to boost security and resilience of digital infrastructure to organisations across the length and breadth of the UK.
The OCN will act as the ‘spine’ from which wholesale fibre broadband providers can branch out into Northumberland’s towns and rural areas at reduced rates, so communities can benefit from improved digital connectivity of up to one gigabit per second for gigabit-capable fibre broadband.
Further, building on and migrating services to the new dark fibre digital infrastructure will help with futureproofing Northumberland’s digital backbone.
For instance, Commsworld plans to utilise the infrastructure established by the recent Local Full Fibre Network (LFFN) project funded by the Government, which will result in a bettered internet connectivity for 110 Northumberland schools.
Leader of Northumberland County Council, Councillor Glen Sanderson, commented on the Commsworld contract, saying: “This long-term approach marks a new and historic way forward for the council and its positive impact cannot be underestimated.
“We are one of the first rural counties in England to focus on changing the lives of our communities by not only providing the infrastructure to give them ground-breaking access to full-fibre broadband, but future-proofing the system so it can adapt and grow according to the needs of everyone who lives and works in Northumberland.
“Above all, it will directly tackle digital exclusion, especially for those in our rural areas. Equality of access is vital if we want to improve the lives of all our citizens.
“Providing access to significantly enhanced internet connections will go a very long way to bridging this digital divide and benefit all our schoolchildren, parents and families, as well as our businesses and organisations.”
Bruce Strang, Chief Operating Officer of Commsworld, also said: “Commsworld welcomes securing this contract to replace Northumberland’s WAN network.
“This is our first major contract of this kind in England, having similarly delivered massively enhanced infrastructure to local authorities in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Renfrewshire, North Lanarkshire and the Scottish Borders.
“We are looking forward to bringing the full, transformative benefits of our Optical Core Network to Northumberland.
“Through the network, and working with our partners – including forward-thinking local fibre providers such as Alncom – we can provide a step change in connectivity and resiliency right across the county, bringing huge benefits to all those who live, learn and work there. I have no doubt that the digital infrastructure we provide will benefit the whole of Northumberland.”
Ana Stewart, the report’s chair and co-author, will be joined by Professor Eleanor Shaw, Carolyn Jameson, Sarah Ronald, and Vanessa Collingridge to cover some of the main topics from the review via a livestreamed panel on Wednesday 8th March at 1pm.
On the upcoming IWD event, Stewart said: “Eleanor, Carolyn, and Sarah were three of the many individuals we engaged with during the discovery phase of the review, and each brings a valuable perspective to the narrative around barriers to female entrepreneurship.
“We have been overwhelmed by the widespread support since the publication of the report and it’s important that we keep the momentum going to ensure the Scottish Government embraces the recommendations.”
Professor Eleanor Shaw, OBE is an Associate Principal at the University of Strathclyde with responsibility for the university’s entrepreneurship strategy. She also holds board positions with the Chartered Association of Business Schools, the Small Business Charter, and the ScaleUp institute.
Carolyn Jameson, Chief Trust Officer, Trustpilot, is an investment committee member with venture capital firm SEP, who also sits on the board of the Scottish National Investment Bank and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Sarah Ronald, Founder of strategic design firm Nile, is an angel investor, a Scottish Technology Ecosystem Advisory Board member, and holds several board positions — including with eco startup Pawprint.
Vanessa Collingridge is a former BBC presenter and an Associate at Freer Consultancy, and is hosting the livestreamed panel.
Stewart herself is an Investment Partner with Eos, who previously founded and exited fintech business i-design. Ana is also a Non-executive Director at the Scottish FA, and Bella & Duke.
The report, Pathways: A New Approach for Women in Entrepreneurship, which was led by Stewart and co-authored with Chief Entrepreneurial Advisor to the Scottish Government, Mark Logan, has highlighted the numerous obstacles for women in Scotland to enter and then prosper in entrepreneurship. It has also set out 31 ways to boost participation and reduce this gender gap.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon commented on the report when it was released on 20th February, saying “The review’s findings are challenging but underline the need to tackle the root-causes, as well as the immediate barriers, of this inequality.”
More information on next week’s IWD event — which is being supported by Startup Grind Scotland, Product Forge, Trustpilot, and the Freer Consultancy — can be found here.
A digital twin is a virtual representation of a real-world physical object or environment, allowing simulations to be run so that issues can be identified and improvements made.
In this instance, the model of Pollok Country Park aims to help Glasgow City Council and its citizens with understanding how and where energy is used and generated, and to mitigate emissions across the estate. This includes Pollok House, the Burrell Collection, the Stables Courtyard buildings, Knowehead Lodge, and the Police Dog Pound.
IES has utilised the digital twin to investigate options for making the park energy independent, generating energy and heat locally. So far, it’s been shown that planned improvements to the park’s buildings will decrease carbon emissions by up to 34%.
IES has also found that by using battery storage, additional renewables, heat pumps, and interconnecting all the buildings’ heat and electrical networks, the park could indeed reach net zero carbon.
A live dashboard has been created to display the project data and results, allowing the energy, carbon, and cost results for each individual building to be easily accessible. Once the project is complete, a dashboard will also be located in the park for public viewing.
Alex Fleming-Knox, Programme Liaison Officer at Glasgow City Council, said: “The IES Digital Twin has provided us with the data and a variety of solutions to help us meet our commitment to make Pollok Country Park net-zero carbon by 2030.
“The IES consultants took the time to guide us through the roadmap to net zero, taking a stepped approach so we could clearly understand the current energy and carbon use of the park and where we needed to implement improvements to create change.
“The Digital Twin has so far shown really encouraging possible results and savings and we very much look forward to seeing these become a reality.”
Valeria Ferrando, Associate Director at IES, also commented: “We’re really pleased to be working with Glasgow City Council on this project and helping to meet the city’s net zero targets with the help of innovative technology.
The council are setting a great example to others around the UK by taking action to decarbonise and utilise technology to help them make data backed, informed decisions on the best ways to improve the performance of the park.
“As energy prices rise and the window for climate action narrows, it’s important that councils are taking steps to actively reduce their consumption and emissions. This project is already showing huge promise and we’re confident that with the right changes in place there is scope for significant savings from the buildings on the estate.”
The project was recently featured in a documentary by B1M — the construction video channel. The documentary is accessible here.
The Small Business Finance Markets 2022/23 report found that from 2018 to Q3 2022, Scotland accounted for 14% of the UK’s net zero-related SME equity deals. This is double its 7% share of total UK low carbon and renewable energy sector turnover.
Comparatively, London accounted for 36% of net zero-related deals nationally, with a share of low carbon sector turnover of 9%.
Highlighted in the report as one of the many businesses securing net zero equity deals in recent years was Celtic Renewables — the Edinburgh-headquartered company whose patented technology converts by-products from the scotch whisky industry into biofuels.
These latest findings back up one of British Business Bank’s prior reports, Nations and Regions Tracker: Small Business Finance Markets 2022, which named Edinburgh as the top local authority for net zero deals, bringing in investment of £186 million through the 92 deals made between 2011 and Q2 2022.
Today’s report also outlined that, even in the face of a turbulent economy, Scotland saw a 26% increase in the announced equity investment value — totalling £525m — during 2022’s first three business quarters when compared with the same period in 2021.
While Scotland did see a decline in the total number of announced equity deals in 2022 compared to 2021 — from 178 down to 151 — this wasn’t exceptional, and was in line with much of the wider UK.
What’s more, overall demand for external finance has fallen across the UK, the report says, with the number of smaller businesses accessing external finance dropping to 33% in 2022 compared to 2021’s 44%.
On the report’s findings, Susan Nightingale, UK network director at the British Business Bank, commented: “Today’s report shows how small businesses are adapting to a challenging economic climate, as they reduce their use of external finance.
“Nevertheless, there are promising signs of growth in the net zero deal sector as equity finance markets respond to growing demand for investment in green innovation.
“Scotland has always been a hub for net zero sectors and it is highly encouraging to see that the country is also a leader in funding these industries.
“However, smaller businesses unable to transition to a low-carbon economy to keep up with regulation or competitors could face significant challenges and may also struggle to secure investment in the future, as more financial institutions begin reflecting ESG in their lending criteria and decision-making.”
Backed by £5.5 million of Treasury and City of London Corporation funding, CFIT aims to create “time-limited ‘coalitions’” of experts across finance, technology, academia, and policy-making to identify and eliminate barriers to fintech sector growth, support the creation of high-income tech-based employment across the UK, and enable fintech companies to scale globally.
The Centre was created in response to the Kalifa Review of UK Fintech — a review which highlighted ways in which the UK could retain its place as a global fintech player.
Sir Ron Kalifa, author of the Kalifa Review, said: “The Centre will be instrumental in fostering collaboration between industry, academia and policymakers, promoting innovation, and turbo-charging the adoption of new technologies for businesses and consumers.
“I have no doubt that it will enable the UK’s fintech sector to become more competitive, and I look forward to seeing the impact it will have across the UK in the weeks, months and years to come.”
While CFIT has no physical office presence, regional financial “innovation hubs” are to be established across England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. By putting these hubs in place, CFIT hopes to “drive national connectivity, by enabling cross-sector experts with a local focus to input on barriers to growth and ensure solutions benefit the whole of the UK.”
Nicola Anderson, CEO of FinTech Scotland, commented: “The CFIT launch is a key milestone in achieving the UK’s fintech ambitions, embracing innovation across all cities and regions. The Centre’s coalition approach very much aligns with the execution of FinTech Scotland’s cluster strategy in advancing fintech growth.
“We are excited to be working with CFIT in leveraging the opportunities in Scotland and the whole of the UK, which will provide further momentum in delivering our ten-year FinTech Research and Innovation Roadmap enabling us all to harness the fintech opportunity across the UK.”
Additionally, the Centre plans to collaborate with UK universities by establishing placements for students at fintech firms, as to develop fresh talent for the sector.
CFIT’s launch has been well-timed. While the UK holds second place globally for most fintech investments — and is home to notable players such as Monzo, Tide, and Checkout.com — UK fintech investments dropped by 8% in 2022, according to data from industry representing body Innovate Finance.
A spinout company of InnoScot Health, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, and the University of Glasgow, Aurum Biosciences develops therapeutics and diagnostics in areas of unmet clinical need.
The company was awarded the Innovation Passport thanks to its lead product, ABL-101 — a patented platform technology which has the potential to offer major advancements in the management of acute stroke patients, especially acute ischaemic strokes (AIS). AIS is the leading global cause of disability and the second-leading cause of death.
The Innovation Passport acts as a gateway to the accelerative pathway, which streamlines innovative products to market, helping to improve patient access to new and effective treatments.
To qualify for the pathway, new medicines and tools must concern a condition which is either life-threatening or seriously debilitating, or an area of significant patient or public health need.
While the current focus is on tackling AIS, ABL-101’s underlying tech can potentially be developed to be used in other high-need clinical areas in the future. These areas could include cardiology, oncology, inflammatory conditions, and neurodegenerative diseases.
David Brennan, who has recently stepped up as CEO of Aurum Biosciences, said: “I am extremely pleased that Aurum have been granted the Innovation Passport which further confirms the significant clinical need for our ABL-101 technology. We look forward to actively engaging with key stakeholders through the ILAP process to help bring our life-saving technology to patients as quickly as possible.
“We believe that the potential worldwide patient benefit for ABL-101 is vast. One in six people have a stroke in their lifetime, 5.8 million die each year as a consequence, and disability increases by 1% for every nine minutes of stroke.
“ABL-101 for stroke treatment remains a fundamental driver for us, but the opportunity in cardiology, oncology, spinal cord injury, inflammatory conditions, and more is significant. We believe the Innovation Passport represents the start of us fully realising that opportunity.”
Graham Watson, Executive Chair, InnoScot Health, also commented on the award, saying: “The awarding of the Innovation Passport confirms the significant clinical need for, and clear potential around, Aurum Bioscience’s technology, initially in tackling AIS but also in targeting other life-threatening and serious conditions.
“It offers a genuine and significant opportunity to ensure new and innovative products reach patients across the UK, safely and quickly.
“We are delighted to have played a role in Aurum Biosciences’ journey as a truly pioneering Scottish company. This milestone, combined with ambitious development plans and widespread investor interest, is another step towards delivering a wide spectrum of health, social, and economic benefits.”
The short announcement, which was made through a Facebook post last night, explained that the tech giant has pulled together different teams working on generative AI from across the company, and that as well as building “creative and expressive tools”, it’s aiming to develop AI personas that will be of benefit to its users.
“We’re creating a new top-level product group at Meta focused on generative AI to turbocharge our work in this area,” Zuckerberg wrote.
“We’re starting by pulling together a lot of the teams working on generative AI across the company into one group focused on building delightful experiences around this technology into all of our different products.
“In the short term, we’ll focus on building creative and expressive tools. Over the longer term, we’ll focus on developing AI personas that can help people in a variety of ways. We’re exploring experiences with text (like chat in WhatsApp and Messenger), with images (like creative Instagram filters and ad formats), and with video and multi-modal experiences.
“We have a lot of foundational work to do before getting to the really futuristic experiences, but I’m excited about all of the new things we’ll build along the way,” he ended.
Meta’s news comes as the world’s tech giants vie to effectively utilise generative AI — which became a global sensation after OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot went viral — in an impactful way. So far, among many other large and small companies alike, Microsoft and Google are concentrating on integrating it into their search engines, while Facebook rival Snapchat is launching its own AI chatbot for its subscribers this week.
However, considering that Meta’s Reality Labs unit — which houses its metaverse technologies — reportedly incurred $13 billion in operating loss across 2022, it’s currently unknown whether this foray into generative AI will follow a similar trajectory, or will instead help to bring in revenue.
Speaking of adding revenue, the company recently unveiled its ‘Meta Verified’ subscription for Facebook and Instagram — a move that offers paying users verification badges, extra account protection, and “increased visibility and prominence.”
Software-based, full-fibre internet service provider (ISP) Brillband — which launched in Glasgow and Renfrewshire last November, and has since established customer bases in cities such as Edinburgh, Dundee, and Aberdeen — gained the batch of funding, which includes backing from international angel investors.
The cash injection will be used to further develop its technology, expand its software development team, as well as growing its marketing and customer experience divisions, with the ISP primed to expand across the UK in early 2024 with sights then set on Europe the following year.
Brillband – whose model revolves around a single rate for the fastest speed for the duration of a customer’s contract with no mid-contract price hikes – is available exclusively on the expanding Cityfibre network, and is cited as one of the network’s fastest growing ISPs in Scotland.
On the investment, Duncan Di Biase, the CEO and founder of Brillband, said: “This investment opens the door to our next phase of growth across Scotland, with expansion across the UK next and then into Europe by 2025.
“Our investors believe in the brand we have built, our purpose, the people behind it, and the potential for Brillband. No other provider has the growth and scale potential we offer and the faith our investors have shown in us demonstrates that.
“2023 will be a huge year for Brillband, and we have major announcements on the horizon. However, our purpose – to provide the best possible broadband connection with outstanding customer service – will remain regardless of how big Brillband gets. That is what will always set us apart.”
Emma Loedel, Glasgow director of global entrepreneur network Startup Grind, commented: “Scotland’s tech scene is buzzing at the moment and entrepreneurs such as Duncan (Di Biase) are the reason for it. It’s a community rich in ideas and the determination to deliver them, and that’s what’s so attractive to investors.
“Brillband’s fresh perspective on how broadband can be delivered – backed up by technology – offers its customers a genuine alternative to the accepted norm and that builds interest.
“Investors are putting their hands in their pockets because they see the scalability potential for Brillband’s model beyond their borders, and that’s a really exciting prospect for the company, and what could become another Scottish tech success story.”
DIGIT last reported on Brillband in July 2022, when the ISP made two key appointments in entrepreneur and fundraising specialist Helena Murphy, and marketing expert Euan Plater, ahead of its November launch.
The consulting firm’s report, The Economic Impact of BT Group plc in the UK, indicates that BT Group made a direct contribution to the Scottish economy estimated at £1bn in the 21/22 financial year. Through the company’s employees, its supply chain, and their subsequent spending, the boost to the Scottish economy came to a total of £1.5 billion, Hatch estimated.
The report also states that the telecommunications giant — which owns EE, Plusnet, Openreach, and of course, BT — spent around £190m with Scottish suppliers based in Scotland. These suppliers encompassed telecommunications, electric power generation, transmission & distribution, and rail transport, among others.
In terms of jobs, the report indicates that BT Group has supported nearly 15,000 jobs across Scotland. This includes the roughly 9,500 full-time staff living in the nation, with Falkirk, Glasgow, and Dundee representing the top three areas where BT employees and contractors live and work. Dundee’s population of BT Group workers is set to increase in the coming years, as work continues on a new contact centre by the waterfront.
The report’s key stats are as follows:
9,540 BT Group employees live in the nation (FTE)
9,470 BT Group employees work in the nation (FTE)
£310 million total income of BT Group employees working in the nation
£190 million spend with suppliers based in the nation
£1,450 million total GVA impact (including indirect and induced effects)
BT Group employed 1 in every 170 employees working in the private sector, and 1 in every 8 employees working in the IT and Communications sectors
£1 in every £150 of GVA was generated directly by BT Group
BT Group supported 1 in every 110 employees working in the private sector
and £1 in every £100 of GVA as a result of the firm’s full economic impact
On these findings, Philip Jansen, Chief Executive, BT Group, said: “BT Group plays a vital role at the heart of the Scottish economy. We’re one of only a handful of companies that serves customers in every corner of the country.
“We’ve continued our major investment in building next generation full fibre and mobile connectivity rapidly across the UK. We’ve already reached 9.6 million premises with full fibre, and our 5G mobile network now reaches 60% of the UK population. The benefits to families and businesses are huge: new jobs, economic growth and innovation, across every nation and region.
“We’re also transforming BT Group so that we’re fit to power the Scottish economy of the future. Our new state-of-the-art offices, spread across the UK, are a central part of that, bringing colleagues together in brilliant spaces that will enable collaboration and help us to better serve our customers.”
The report comes as the Group continues to deliver full-fibre broadband across Scotland via Openreach, and as EE’s 5G network is rolled out to more Scottish cities, towns, and rural communities.
Designed to complement existing security awareness training, Cyber Escape is a free escape room-style experience, providing groups of up to six with a practical opportunity to improve their knowledge by completing puzzles and tasks.
Security practices worked on include protecting privacy and creating strong passwords, device and document handling, and navigating social media.
Built inside a roving mobile unit, Cyber Escape was first based at CGI’s Tweedbank offices earlier this month. It then moved to Edinburgh Napier University for several days, before heading to Atlantic Quay in Leith where it’s currently located for CyberScotland Week.
Lindsay McGranaghan, Senior Vice President Scotland and Northern Ireland, CGI, said: “Our Cyber Escape experience is an excellent and accessible way to learn the key fundamentals of cyber security.
“It uses real-world interaction as a way to reinforce the learning it advocates, so that those who take part will learn very quickly and effectively what they need to do to protect themselves from would-be hackers.”
So far this month, schools, Edinburgh Napier University, and Skills Development Scotland (SDS) have been among the Scottish organisations to go through CGI’s Cyber Escape.
Claire Gillespie, Sector Manager for Digital Technologies at SDS, said: “Cyber security is an increasing priority for employers of all sizes and across all sectors, forming a fundamental part of their digital skills needs.
“SDS is working to help employers meet those needs, but as an employer ourselves we also recognise the importance of supporting colleagues to enhance their skills and awareness. The CGI Cyber Escape experience is a useful addition to that support, illustrating why so many businesses view this as a priority area.”
In particular, for staff members at Edinburgh Napier University, the experience has led to “new conversations about secure behaviour.”
Graeme Hamilton, Information Security Manager at Edinburgh Napier University, said: “Like many other organisations, Edinburgh Napier University faces challenges in making security awareness engaging for our staff. Therefore, we gladly accepted CGI’s offer of the Cyber Escape experience and have not been disappointed that we did.
“Not only have people had fun participating, but this has led to new conversations about secure behaviour and hopefully a positive shift in our security culture.”
The CEOs of the two Glasgow-based organisations cited a trend of investors preferring to invest in scale-ups rather than startups as the reason for the collaboration.
Paul Wilson, STAC’s CEO, said: “From the outset, STAC has been strongly supported by the Scottish investment community, but we have to recognise that the successful evolution of Scotland’s angel syndicates, who are now investing more frequently in scale-up companies than seeding startups, means there is a void in access to capital for early stage companies. So, we are working to plug the gap.
“The upside of Scotland’s multi-decades of small business generation is the creation of a strong talent pool of experienced entrepreneurs who have exited their ventures and want to support the next generation of founders, and the Murphy tie-up gives us access to a large community of these entrepreneurs.”
Adrian Murphy, CEO, Murphy Wealth, added: “Paul and the STAC team have made incredible progress in the eighteen months since the accelerator was launched. In common with our own firm, we support entrepreneurs, albeit at a different stage of the entrepreneurial journey, and we share a strong belief in how transformational entrepreneurs and fast-growth tech companies can be to the wider economy.
“We also share STAC’s ambition to create world-beating companies from a base in Scotland, and are pleased to be strengthening our relationship with STAC to help make this happen.”
To help bring in investment, STAC and Murphy Wealth will launch ‘STAC Invest’; an online platform showcasing Scotland’s IoT and smart devices startups to both local and international investors.
Additionally, STAC and Murphy Wealth plan to “ensure experienced talent is in place to build an international IoT tech cluster in Scotland.”
This comes off the back of the launch of ‘STAC Jobs’ in January; an IoT recruitment platform created in partnership with Jordan Talent Solutions, aimed at improving recruitment and retention in Scotland’s IoT industry.
Paul Wilson commented: “Our STAC-supported companies have international perspective from day one, it’s built into their DNA, and to plan for international growth you need access to capital and talent. The partnerships with Murphy and Jordan underpin this approach.
“The IoT and smart device market in Scotland is heating up, we’ve seen merger and acquisition activity with companies like Pelion, Sonos, and Current Health, and Waire, IOpt, Krucial, Kingdom Technologies, and Beringar are among the next wave of sector players building investment and market momentum.
“With STAC’s Jobs, Space, and Investment, we have the acceleration support in place to support internationally competitive businesses.”
STAC currently supports 23 companies with 70 employees from its Glasgow Skypark base. The accelerator will be accepting applications for its third cohort of companies on 1st March.
Meeting demand for tech talent in Scotland is a real ongoing issue as companies seek to attract skilled workers in a very crowded market.
The Scottish Government’s recent report, Building a New Scotland, found that our tech sector is forecast to be the second fastest growing sector (26%) in Scotland by 2029 in terms of gross value added (GVA). The industry is growing 1.5 times faster than the economy overall, which shows generally just how much it is thriving.
But data from global consulting giant Accenture last year found our country is also struggling to compete with other UK regions when it comes to attracting staff with the right skills for these jobs. Additionally, a recent survey carried out by digital infrastructure firm Equinix found that over two-thirds of IT decision-makers in the UK view a shortage of IT skills as one of the main threats to their business.
It is clear, then, that as a nation we face a real challenge to attract the correct talent to take up these positions.
So what do we need to do to improve the situation?
One approach would be to look at how other countries approach this issue. The Canadian government, for example, has granted special visas to attract new talent. Should the UK Government be thinking of creative ideas like this to lure more people to Scotland, and across the UK?
In recent months we’ve also had big redundancies at Meta, Twitter, Google parent company Alphabet, and other huge world-leading tech firms, meaning there are experienced operators out there who have been left without a job. The Scottish and UK Government should be working closely together to consider how we best attract these people to Scotland.
On the topic of younger talent breaking through, it’s clear that many in Scottish universities are attracted by the bright lights of London, with the financial services industry hiring a substantial number of the best computer science students every year.
Higher-paid tech employees in Scotland also now pay more tax than their counterparts in the rest of the UK, which could make it harder to retain more experienced talent. Further, many smaller, newer, Scottish businesses simply can’t compete with the salaries being offered down south.
There are, however, valuable tax reliefs available such as Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) schemes that can help founders bridge that gap and recruit and retain the best talent, and companies like Johnston Carmichael can help put these in place. Our ecosystem could also be better at speaking to university students about the benefits of staying in Scotland and what they could achieve here.
Furthermore, I can’t help thinking we are missing a trick earlier in the education system. It’s widely acknowledged that there is a shortage of computing science teachers — which is an issue I cannot see being resolved in the short term — but in addition, I don’t believe tech is widely being encouraged at schools as a viable career option, despite how much the sector is growing.
Improving careers advice in our schools and getting more young people interested in tech is relatively simple but it will take some effort; we can and should be doing this right now.
We need to ensure careers advisors are receiving the best information about the sector, and there are many talented people across industry, government and education that could help with that aspect. Encouraging more 4th and 5th year school pupils into targeted modern apprenticeships in the sector is another possible way of expanding the talent pool. Could this be something for Scotland’s Chief Entrepreneur Mark Logan’s office to drive forward?
In today’s hybrid environment, a growing number of Scotland’s tech companies already have their development teams overseas as they struggle to source enough of the correct people here at home. This approach obviously solves the issue short-term, but to ensure the sector is sustainable we must think about how we create people with these skills here.
It’s important to point out that the eco-system in Scotland is much better than it was five years ago — there’s a lot to be positive about.
We just need to keep continuing the good work and be bolder about making these ongoing talent issues a thing of the past.
After sifting through Companies House’s data, RSM UK — a provider of audit, tax, and consulting services to middle-market companies — discovered that a total of 1,367 Scottish tech companies were incorporated in 2022. This is a jump of 243, seeing as the number was 1,124 in 2021.
In their data deep-dive, RSM UK also revealed that the total increase of tech incorporations across the whole of the UK in 2022 compared to 2021 was 22% — matching the figure for Scotland. Furthermore, all UK regions saw rises in tech incorporations, with eight out of ten seeing a climb of around or above 22%.
Despite this year-on-year increase for Scotland’s tech incorporation numbers, 2021 was still technically a better year for the region, however: in 2021, there was growth of around 37% compared to 2020.
Ben Bilsland, partner and Technology Industry Senior Analyst at RSM UK, said “Despite the obvious economic challenges, it’s been another strong year for the tech industry.
“Whilst it is no surprise to see London at the centre of new tech incorporations, growth across all regions outside the capital is further evidence of the UK’s thriving tech industry. There is clearly appetite from entrepreneurs to start up new, innovative businesses and become part of the UK’s booming tech industry.”
Speaking on the 46,474 new tech companies incorporated across the UK in 2022, Bilsland also said: “This crop of early-stage businesses will need support to scale. Access to funding will be crucial and the UK government will need to ensure that UK tech is an attractive place for both domestic and overseas investment.
“For many young innovative companies, R&D tax incentives are crucial cash inflows. For many, the recent changes to UK R&D schemes that reduced the amounts small companies can claim were not seen as a positive step towards supporting the early-stage ecosystem.
“Innovation requires a world-class talent pool and UK tech will look to both education and immigration to build their workforces. Support from our universities and schools to build skills in STEM subjects and emergent areas such as Artificial Intelligence will be essential. Clarity over immigration policy will be required to ensure a healthy inflow of tech talent to fuel growing companies.”
In partnership with QTV, the Caledonian Club — the university’s local initiative tackling below-average progression rates into higher education — supplied a series of broadcasting workshops at Film City Studios in Govan.
These activities and challenges were provided over the last five days to help inspire and educate P5 students from across Glasgow about work opportunities in the broadcast industry, as part of a wider STEM programme.
Employees and volunteers from QTV — best known for its sports broadcasting and live events — demonstrated the wide array of equipment used, and discussed the types of careers available in the broadcast technology industry.
Covering all aspects of the broadcast industry, QTV offered activities involving filming with broadcast cameras, lighting sets, setting up audio equipment, sports broadcast replay operating, and more.
Nathan Tagg, Caledonian Club Manager, said: “Our P5 STEM project helps pupils explore different topics and careers across STEM industries. The partnership with QTV, that grew through a connection with the University’s Audio Technology degree, opens up the exciting world of broadcast and introduces pupils to roles and careers they may never have considered.
“TV is so familiar to us all and, through this year’s P5 STEM project, the pupils will develop an understanding of the number of people and diverse roles it takes to bring programmes to our screen.
“These pupils could be the broadcast engineers of the future and, with the fun, interactive experiences QTV are able to provide, pupils can see themselves in these roles and be inspired to follow a new career path.”
QTV’s Director of People and Purpose, Lucy Lake, added: “We have been faced with a skills shortage in many areas of the broadcast technology sector and wanted to build a long-term strategy within the education sector to build a sustainable, diverse and engaged pool of talent in Scotland.
“The industry needs more social and economic diversity within the STEM-aligned roles involved in broadcast and we are very grateful to be able to pilot our workshops within the Caledonian Club’s well established and successful outreach initiative.
“These workshops are a drive to alleviate the elusive accessibility of careers within the broadcasting industry, which acts as a barrier to entry for many people, especially those of underserved communities.
“By engaging children from a very young age, we would hope to inspire more of them to open their eyes to the technical side of broadcasting as a good, resilient and exciting career path.”
The schools involved in this week’s events include Elmvale Primary, St Monica’s (Milton), Haghill Park and St Martha’s Primary, St Bartholomew’s Primary, and Camstradden Primary.
When Thomas Jefferson became US president in 1801, he would receive around 150 letters every 30 days. Skip ahead 100 years, Theodore Roosevelt needed a separate team of staff to handle the sheer weight of letters he received. By the time Harry Truman was in power, 144 years later, letters arrived at a rate of three truckloads per day.
In 2023, it’s estimated that Joe Biden receives a massive 65,000 letters per week – not to mention all the emails and DMs he receives, and the social media posts about him that people across the globe are sharing on a daily basis. It’s a great demonstration of the data volume challenge every business now faces.
But volume isn’t the only element that’s increasing. Data has become more valuable, and as a result, the decisions made using it are more critical and growing in number by the day.
Take predictive healthcare, anomaly detection, predictive maintenance and operational equipment efficiency, and pre- and post-trade analytics as examples: these are all systems which have come from ever-increasing sources of data.
And that’s before businesses even start to understand what machine learning (ML) may demonstrate when it comes to detecting trends or patterns. Depending on how fast a system can identify them, they could either flag exciting new opportunities or, on the flip side, highlight potential future concerns the business should know.
However, many companies, regardless of industry sector, simply aren’t harnessing the power of their data to generate these insights. They’re too focused on solving technical problems with their data, leading them to become blind to how they could be using it to uncover valuable information.
A key reason for this is that legacy databases and analytics software aren’t able to handle the increased demand that comes with capturing and analysing data in real time.
Below are five must-haves for a modern real-time analytics engine using time series data, so that organisations can begin using such data to meet their overarching business goals.
Putting time series first
While it isn’t widely known, most data today is time series-based, as it’s been generated by processes and machines rather than humans. Any business looking to make use of data’s potential should ensure they have an analytics database that’s optimised for time series-specific characteristics, such as append-only, fast, and timestamped. A high-class system should be able to quickly digest diverse data sets and perform in-line calculations, as well as execute fast reads and provide efficient storage.
Resisting the urge to narrow down systems
Alongside this, the data estate of a typical modern enterprise is large and growing every day. This means any analytics engine a business deploys must interface with a wide variety of messaging protocols and support a range of data formats along with inter-process communication (IPC) and REST APIs for quick, easy connectivity to multiple sources. It should also cater for reference data, like sensor or bond IDs, that will enable it to add context and meaning to streaming data sets, giving the ability to combine them in advanced analytics and share them to make strategic business decisions.
Don’t forget historical data
By combining real-time data for up-to-date insights, along with historical data for past context, organisations can make quicker and better in-the-moment responses to events as they happen. Plus, this can eliminate the development and maintenance overhead of replicated queries and analytics across different systems. The ability to rapidly process increased volumes of data using fewer computing resources is also incredibly helpful for ML initiatives, not to mention reducing TCO and helping businesses to hit any sustainability goals they might have.
Taking on the cloud to create smooth processes
The top thing businesses need to add to their data toolkit is an analytics software built with microservices that allows developers and data scientists to quickly ingest, transform and publish valuable insights on datasets – all without needing to develop complex access, tracking, and location mechanisms.
Complications like data tiering, aging, archiving, and migration can take up important time and resources which could be better used to concentrate on creating insights which business leaders can utilise. Additionally, natively integrating with major cloud vendors and making this available as a fully-managed service is an important consideration if businesses are seeking to onboard a new system with ease.
Trying before buying
Time series databases are not new to the market. However, the ever-growing volume, velocity, and variety of data, alongside the pressure to create rapid insights and actions from it, means many technologies have yet to be properly tested within the wider market. But business leaders need to remain vigilant and be looking for software where there are robust use cases and clear examples of return on investment.
Data is a constantly moving target, and businesses need to recognise this and evolve to keep up. It’s now an independent asset with its own C-Level owners, allowing businesses to automate decisions in fields including, but not limited to trading, production, and network.
Plus, it holds more economic value than ever before, as businesses are now finding they pay more for it, but the insights it can generate can contribute greater freedom to businesses.
There are a wide variety of positives businesses can reap from continuous, context-rich data analytics-driven insights based on time series data, such as delivering greater business decisions, enabling enterprises to adapt faster to market changes, increasing customer satisfaction, and ultimately improving the bottom line.
However, this can only be the case if business leaders ensure their teams have the right technology in place at the right time – or they risk losing out to competitors who recognise this new data must-have first.
Edinburgh-based fintech firm DirectID has secured investment of nearly £8 million from the Ingka Group, owner and operator of most IKEA stores.
With the funding, the Scottish firm is seeking to expand its credit risk offering into new markets, and advancing the development of models for each stage of the credit lifecycle.
The Ingka Group’s acquisition was made through its Ingka Investments arm — and is the latest in a series of investments made to strengthen the Group’s core retail business, supporting its goal to being continually “affordable, accessible, and sustainable.”
On the fintech’s cash injection, Peter van der Poel, Ingka Investments’ Managing Director, said: “We are pleased to have made this investment in DirectID and are confident of their continued growth in the open banking market.
“They have developed an innovative solution with the potential to complement and disrupt the traditional credit and risk market and help drive financial inclusion for more people. Open Banking-enabled credit and risk insights is an area we believe can add value to Ingka’s financial services proposition in the future.”
James Varga, the CEO and founder of DirectID, added: “We’re proud to join Ingka Investments’ portfolio of market-leading firms. We are excited to be shaping a new global standard in credit scoring that enhances people’s lives by enabling access to products they need in an affordable way.
“Our coverage, advanced insights and predictive models provide a unique opportunity to achieve this by creating the world’s first real-time, inclusive, credit score based on open finance data.”
This time last year, DIGIT named DirectID as one of Scotland’s February 2022 movers and shakers: they’d recently announced seven new hires off the back of a $3 million (£2.4m~) bridge funding round, led by Hong Kong-based venture capital fund QBN Capital.
According to the report, the key drivers for growth include increasing government incentives for EV ownership, demand for EVs, and rising EV sales. It also predicted that the total number of plug-in vehicles will excel 137 million globally by 2027, up from 49 million in 2023.
While these market strengths have been outlined, the report also highlighted roadblocks that are hindering the market from further expansion, such as fragmentation in charging networks, which is currently restricting EV adoption.
As it stands, chargers are overwhelmingly located in urban areas, adding to range anxiety surrounding the lack of chargers in more rural locations. Additionally, there’s difficulty in accessing charging points as they are often gatekept via different apps and cards.
In response to these problems, the report’s author advocates for a range of solutions. These include simplifying charger access and diversifying the locations of chargers, as well as working in conjunction with local authorities to ensure successful roll outs of new chargers.
As EV adoption grows, the author also suggests that charging vendors must differentiate their services in a highly fragmented market, target consumers early on to foster brand loyalty, develop strategic partnerships with automotive manufacturers, and offer incentivising benefits — such as discounted rates — to help EV charging vendors remain competitive.
As part of the investigation, the market research company also ranked 20 EV charging vendors — such as Tesla, BP Pulse, and ChargePoint — evaluating them on a criteria including breadth of offerings, innovation, and future prospects. But it was Siemens who clinched first place on Juniper Research’s Competitor Leaderboard.
Research author Jordan Rookes explained further: “Siemens demonstrates an intricate knowledge of the market; targeting currently underserved segments, particularly public transport and fleets. Competing vendors must diversify their portfolio away from just home and public chargers, and start targeting alternative high-growth market segments to maximise their market share.”
Blueview will offer passengers of the airline’s new Airbus A320neo a range of in-flight entertainment experiences, including blockbuster movies, box sets, regional content, games, and moving maps.
The first aircraft is set to arrive in Malta next month, with the experience platform ready to be used by passengers as soon as the new plane enters service.
Additionally, a further three new 180-seater Airbus A320neo aircrafts will be joining Air Malta’s fleet, and the model is set to become the cornerstone of Air Malta’s planned new fleet.
For Bluebox, this partnership with Air Malta marks its third customer deployment for its wireless digital services platform on an Airbus Airspace Link installation. The aviation tech firm’s first customer deployment was with Titan Airways in 2020, with Jetstar Group being their second in 2022.
In addition to its entertainment offerings, the digital services platform comes with the underlying functionality which ensures the secure delivery of content, third-party app integration, content management and analytics. Blueview can also be configured for each airline’s branding specifications and customer needs.
Kevin Birchmore, VP of Global Sales at Bluebox, said: “As our industry recovers from one of the most challenging periods we’ve ever experienced, it’s exciting to see some real momentum on two fronts – the demand for digital services in all its forms, from IFE to onboard retail, but also the fact we’re seeing new aircraft coming into the global fleet that are to be kitted out from the start with our digital services platform.
“We’re excited to be included in the growth ambitions of customers like Air Malta, intent on offering their passengers the best onboard experience they can, and to be helping deliver that with Blueview.”
With over eight years experience as a key member of the leadership team that scales up AWS, Cloudsoft will seek to leverage McCann’s expertise in line with the company’s projected global enterprise customer base growth.
After joining AWS in 2014 as VP of AWS Marketplace, McCann and his team helped build and manage a collection of AWS services including Marketplace, Control Services, Migration Services, Data Exchange and more, with the team bringing in around 12,000 software products from over 3,000 suppliers, and then to millions of worldwide buyers.
McCann, who’s originally from Airdrie but now lives in Seattle, first became aware of Cloudsoft in 2018, when the firm was brought on as an official AWS launch partner to deliver the AWS Service Management Connector.
“Cloudsoft was on my radar, initially as a talented AWS engineering partner but then as a lighthouse example of a Scottish scale-up with big potential,” McCann said. “Scotland has a strong history of innovation in tech since the 1980’s.
“Cloudsoft, with its Edinburgh roots, its open source software and trusted partner status of AWS, is a direct result of Ross Gray, CEO, and Alex Heneveld, CTO, assembling a world-class team of innovators.”
Cloudsoft’s flagship software, Cloudsoft AMP, uses autonomic computing principles and automation to help mitigate the risk of technological failure.
AMP can also orchestrate application resources described in AWS CloudFormation, Hashicorp Terraform and Azure ARM templates. This digital reliability that AMP provides is critical, considering the squandered revenue and enduring reputational damage that business downtime can incur.
Additionally, the Edinburgh-based company also recently launched Cloudsoft Fusion — an integration-as-a-service solution providing tailored integration between AWS and IT service management tooling (ITSM).
On McCann’s appointment, Ross Gray added: “We are delighted that Dave has selected Cloudsoft as one of his first board engagements after leaving AWS.
“He brings an enviable track record of nurturing businesses to reach and exceed their potential. His guidance will continue to accelerate Cloudsoft’s success and further drive our growth”.
Uswitch’s latest UK-wide study delved into the costly issue of losing mobile phones, gathering several key insights from over 2,000 respondents that go across region, city, and age.
While more than half (56%) of Brits reported that they’ve lost or had stolen at least one mobile phone in their lifetime, the figure from Scottish respondents is lower, with 51% saying they’ve misplaced their handset. Of that number, 41% of respondents said they’ve lost one phone, 7% have lost two, and 3% have lost three phones or more. 49% claimed they’ve never lost a phone at all.
The only other region to be below Scotland’s mark is Wales, coming in at 49%. Northern Ireland, meanwhile, comes in at the top, with 75% of respondents confirming they’ve been parted from at least one phone during their lives – 19% higher than the overall average, and 24% higher than in Scotland.
The study also revealed disparities between Scotland’s two largest cities, with more phones going walkabout in Glasgow than in the capital. 39% of Edinburgh-based respondents said they had one or more phones go missing, while 57% of Glaswegians said the same.
In terms of common locations of phone loss, the study uncovered that public transport is the leading location for owners to be separated from their phones, with 35% of all respondents saying so. The next most likely location is a shop (28%), then a restaurant or bar (26%), then in a taxi (15%), followed by work (12%) and school (4%).
Further, people aged 25-34 are far more likely (78%) to lose a phone when compared to both older and younger generations.
Finally, the research also underscored the fact that, no matter whether the consumer is in Scotland or elsewhere in the UK, losing a phone is costly business: Of those who had to replace their phone due to loss or theft, 44% reported an estimated cost of up to £250.
