In light of the EU’s concerns about the potential spreading of disinformation, and “terrorist and violent content and hate speech” in particular, investigators are looking into X’s compliance with EU policies concerning illegal content, complaint handling, risk assessment, and mitigation, as set out in its Digital Services Act (DSA).
This investigation is the first launched under the DSA, a law which came into effect in August of this year, setting out a new standard of accountability for online social media and digital platforms on the issues of disinformation, illegal content, and other societal risks.
Categorised by the EU as a “Very Large Online Platform,” which is based on the grounding that it has over 45 million users, X is compelled to be transparent in its content policies, take action on reports of illegal content, and mitigate the risks to public security and civic discourse prompted by disinformation.
The investigation comes just days after EU commissioner Thierry Breton sent a letter to Elon Musk, X’s owner, reminding him that “the Digital Services Act sets very precise obligations regarding content moderation,” and asking for a response within 24 hours.
In response, Linda Yaccarino, X’s chief executive, wrote that “X is committed to serving the public conversation, especially in critical moments like this, and understands the importance of addressing any illegal content that may be disseminated through the platform.
“There is no place on X for terrorist organizations or violent extremist groups and we continue to remove such accounts in real time, including proactive efforts.”
Despite Yaccarino’s reply, the EU has opened its probe into X following “indications received” of possible disinformation shared on the platform.
TikTok, as another Very Large Online Platform, was warned by the EU yesterday to “urgently step up” its efforts on this front.
Earlier this week, DIGIT covered reports from researchers that disinformation is proliferating on social amid the ongoing conflict.
Justin Peden, or “IntelCrab” — a researcher known for his reliable fact-checking and social media coverage of the war in Ukraine — also said that “For many reasons, this is the hardest time I’ve ever had covering a crisis on here [X].”
The firm, previously known as Cyan Forensics, has developed digital safeguarding software that’s utilised by law enforcement agencies around the world, and is cited to be 100 times quicker than the market’s existing sifting tools.
The batch of funding — of which SNIB committed £2.6 million — is set to be used by Cyacomb to scale up operations, explore new markets, and continue to drive down harmful digital content.
CEO Ian Stevenson said: “Our forensics products help law enforcement find evidence fast, speeding investigations and supporting prompt safeguarding actions for children and the wider community.
“We are now turning our attention up-stream too, tackling one of society’s most pressing issues – the rising levels of child sexual abuse material being shared in our increasingly encrypted online world.
“Cyacomb Safety detects and blocks child sexual abuse material within the end-to-end encrypted environment whilst protecting user privacy and security.”
“This funding comes at a strategic time for us as we expand our market reach and appoint a new non-executive director, Richie McBride. Richie, founder of Edesix Ltd, brings a wealth of experience in scaling software businesses, particularly servicing law enforcement and government clients.
“The Bank’s support will ensure we are able to grow as a business, introduce our software to more organisations and ultimately protect children and improve online safety.”
The investment into Cyacomb is said to be the Bank’s first regarding safety technology.
Jane Reoch, executive director at SNIB, commented: “Their software is delivering real, tangible benefits to society both in detecting harmful content, but also reducing trauma as officers no longer have to trawl through hours of offensive images – it’s all done quickly and efficiently with their software.”
“It’s inspiring to support companies like Cyacomb in being able to grow and develop their product to take it further in to new, global markets.”
The Dallas Police Department in the U.S. is a user of Cyacomb’s platform. Mike Fontenot, a detective at the Department, said: “Cyacomb’s products offer true potential to hasten investigation and assist police departments across the world in protecting children, holding predators accountable for their crimes.
“Cyacomb has managed to create software, that would have previously taken hours to complete, and condensed it to less than a minute – this was a real-world application of seized devices from an actual search warrant.”
Backed by funding from the UK Government’s Innovation Accelerator programme, the project itself is a two-sided XR — a catch-all term for immersive technology including virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality — platform.
One part of the platform will enable people to access an array of museums, sites, objects, and dynamic experiences virtually. The second part of the platform will allow virtual curators to tell stories by combining 3D objects and environments.
The University of Glasgow said it will “empower online visitors to explore vast cultural assets in engaging new ways,” and “enable expert and novice curators to create new content.”
The Museums in the Metaverse team, led by Professor Neil McDonnell at Glasgow, noted that while virtual museums won’t replace the experience of visiting a traditional museum in-person, they hope XR will enhance the offerings of traditional museums.
So far, and generally speaking, creating museum experiences in the metaverse has proven challenging due to the high costs involved with the creation of 3D objects and environments.
In light of this, the project’s research staff are to develop, streamline, and publish workflows using advanced photogrammetry equipment to boost the capacity for and affordability of heritage content creation.
Speaking on the project, McDonnell said: “Virtual Reality Museums offer transformative extensions to the traditional museum experience: they can host collections of any size, show distant objects side-by-side, and be accessed from anywhere in the world. Their potential is extraordinary.
“However, there are several challenges – economic, technological, and cultural – which have so far limited universal use including the expense of producing a bespoke VR experience as well as lack of technical skills to digitise collections and assets in 3D.
“It is estimated that over 90% of objects in collections can’t be seen as they are in storage. Museums in the Metaverse can help liberate these collections and will allow museums the freedom to connect with their audiences in new and exciting ways. Just imagine being able to step into history and get up close to the virtual duplicates of ancient relics that in the real world can only be displayed or viewed behind glass.
“We also hope that it will bring new audiences to museums who are currently excluded as they live too far from [the] biggest and best collections. Moreover, Museums in the Metaverse will let anyone create their own virtual museums and tell their own stories with objects from all around the world.”
Header photo by Martin Shields. Video trailer courtesy of the University of Glasgow.
The Chartered Institute of Information Security’s (CIISec) 2022/23 State of the Profession report has been published, revealing how security professionals feel about their careers and the industry, in addition to highlighting trends and challenges.
After surveying just over 300 people, it was found that cybersecurity professionals remain positive about the industry and their opportunities as a whole. For example, 84% of respondents said that the industry is growing or booming, with 80% saying they have good or excellent career prospects.
On this, Amanda Finch, CEO of CIISec, commented: “It’s good to see cybersecurity professionals are positive about their career prospects. The cybersecurity industry is thriving. It has many opportunities for people from almost any background, and the need for cybersecurity is greater than ever as threats continue to rise – making a critical function essentially recession-proof.
“However, the industry cannot rest on its laurels: it must do more to ensure talent is properly supported and not burnt out. Key to this will be equipping them with the right skills, and attracting fresh blood into the industry to ensure teams aren’t put under undue pressure.”
Regarding the stress, pressure, and burnout that Finch pointed to, the report highlights that the industry is still plagued by issues including stress and overwork. For instance, 22% of respondents work more than the 48 hours per week mandated by the UK Government, and 8% work more than 55 hours which, according to the World Health Organisation, marks the boundary between safe and unsafe working hours.
Further, when asked about what keeps them awake at night, the two main sources of stress for cyber professionals are day-to-day stress and workload, identified by 50%, and suffering a cyber-attack, cited by 32%.
Poor working environments — resulting from bad or ineffective leadership, tedious work or a lack of variety, and issues with teams or colleagues — were all top reasons for security workers to leave their jobs. However, it was poor remuneration that was cited as the number one factor prompting people to leave their roles, followed by a lack of opportunity and progression.
CIISec’s survey also underscored the continued issue of skills shortages. However, respondents didn’t believe there was a lack of people, but rather a lack of skilled personnel.
Relatedly, respondents revealed that analytical and problem-solving skills, followed by communication, then technical skills are the key capabilities needed to tackle cyber-threats, highlighting how the industry requires a culmination of both technical and non-technical skills to succeed.
Commenting on this, Finch said: “Traditionally, the cyber security industry has been seen as super technical career. However, as we can see it is much more than that.
“It demands social, managerial, investigative, and even financial capabilities. The industry must start doing better at advertising the opportunities to use different skills to broaden cybersecurity’s appeal.
“At the same time, the industry needs to prioritise the people within it. This means creating an environment that they want to work in and can thrive. By doing this, the industry can continue to boom, and cyber security professionals can live long and fulfilled careers.”
To uncover the findings, Splunk, a U.S.-based software company, conducted both qualitative and quantitative research on around 350 CISOs and other executive security leaders. The experts were located internationally, working in locations across North America, Western Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region.
While, overall, 47% of CISOs are now reporting to their CEOs, Western Europe appears to be leading this trend, with 54% doing so. In comparison, 48% of CISOs based in the Asia-Pacific region report directly to their CEOs, as do 41% of those in North America. The report points to existing and incoming European legislation that places liability on CEOs for their business’ security as the reason for Western Europe’s higher percentage here.
Despite the variation, the number of CISOs reporting to CEOs can indicate a closer relationship with the C-suite and their respective governing boards, and therefore reflect the CISO’s growing influence. Speaking on this, Splunk’s CEO, Jason Lee, said: “The C-Suite and board of directors are increasingly relying on CISOs for guidance across a sophisticated threat landscape and changing market conditions.”
“These relationships provide CISOs the opportunity to become champions who strengthen an organization’s security culture and lead teams to become more cross-collaborative and resilient. By communicating key security metrics, CISOs can also guide boards on adopting emerging technologies, such as generative AI, to help improve cyber defense management and prepare for the future.”
The report also underscored that 93% of respondent CISOs believe that their cybersecurity budgets will increase either significantly or somewhat over the next year, despite 83% seeing cuts in other parts of their organisation. This could be in relation to the fact that 88% of CISOs said their governing board or body is making a concerted effort to educate themselves on cybersecurity.
The research’s findings of increasing CISO influence in addition to expanding cybersecurity budgets comes at a necessary time: 90% of respondents said their organisation had experienced at least one disruptive cyber-attack within the last year, and 70% believe generative AI will provide further ammunition for adversaries.
In response to the potential threat of weaponised generative AI, 35% of respondents noted that they’re already experimenting with it for cyber-defence, including malware analysis, workflow automation, and risk scoring. Further, 61% said they’ll likely use it in the next 12 months.
“We are trying to stay ahead of generative AI,” said one CISO working for a government organisation. “We know it is a technology that is being used. Instead of blocking the technology, we are trying to put as many guardrails around it as possible.”
This aligns with data from the prior Report on Jobs, which suggested “a weaker outlook for the Scottish labour market in the remaining months of 2023.”
Regarding permanent staff appointments, Scottish recruiters recorded a second monthly fall in September, with the rate of contraction quickening from August and being sharp overall. The downturn was linked to fewer vacancies as well as some reports of difficulties in sourcing and securing candidates, respondents noted.
September’s data also signalled a sharp drop in temp recruitment across Scotland, thereby extending the current run of decrease to a year. Recruiters attributed the drop to weaker demand conditions and candidate shortages in certain sectors.
Amid candidate shortages, salaries for prospective permanent employees and wages for temporary staff rose in September, with the upturn in permanent salaries being the fastest since June and marked overall.
In terms of staff supply, the availability of permanent candidates in Scotland also decreased during September, stretching the current period of decline that began in February 2021. Despite easing to a three-month low, the rate of contraction remained sharp. Recruitment consultancies cited generally tight labour market conditions and skills shortages had weighed on candidate numbers.
There was also a further fall in temp staff supply during September, continuing a trend which has been apparent for just over two-and-a-half years. Moreover, the rate of contraction was the quickest in three months, and was strong in the context of historical data. Recruitment agencies highlighted an increased reluctance among workers to move roles amid concerns over job security.
Lastly, and after falling for the first time in over two-and-a-half years in August, demand for permanent staff further deteriorated across Scotland in September, with temp vacancies also contracting.
Speaking on the survey’s findings, Sebastian Burnside, chief economist at RBS, commented: “Recruitment activity across the Scottish labour market deteriorated as the third quarter drew to a close. Both permanent staff appointments and temp billings fell at sharp rates, with panellists linking the reductions to candidate shortages and falling demand for labour amid concerns over the wider economic climate.
“Uncertainty around the outlook also meant that workers were more hesitant to risk a job move, leading to further falls in staff availability. Moreover, ongoing candidate shortages and the increasing cost of living prompted employers to raise their pay offer to attract and secure workers.”
N4 Partners (N4) has announced the appointments of Alan MacLeod and Richard Elliot, as the Glasgow-headquartered investment and advisory firm continues to bolster its ranks since its founding in 2020.
Richard Elliot joins N4 as its new director of property, signalling a strategic move for the firm into real estate investments. He brings a wealth of investment experience, having initially started his corporate banking career at the Bank of Scotland before spending 12 years at Maven Capital Partners, where in his role as investment director he focused on originating and transacting real estate projects across the UK.
Alan MacLeod, who’s joining N4 as a director, has amassed over two decades of experience holding senior finance roles within a diverse mix of global healthcare and energy sector businesses operating across complex international territories.
Richard Elliot commented: “I’m delighted to be joining such a highly experienced and entrepreneurial team at N4. There are always opportunities in real estate throughout economic cycles and I’m really excited to bring N4 Property to the market. I’ll be working with the broader team to identify and execute interesting projects with a key focus on delivering strong returns on capital invested.”
Alan MacLeod also added: “I’m thrilled to be joining N4 as the team continue to expand their investment portfolio and advisory offering. The current investment and advisory landscape has a significant number of opportunities and I look forward to working alongside clients and management teams alike to deliver their full potential.”
The hiring announcement comes just months N4 launched its maiden venture capital fund after gaining regulatory approval from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
With a targeted fund size of £3 to 5 million, the firm aims to invest between £100k to £750k in up to 20 Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) qualifying businesses emerging throughout the UK, with a focus on utilising the firm’s network across Scotland.
Forty-three of the region’s schools are currently involved with the project — supplying them the latest environmental sensors — with this figure set to double as West Lothian schools join over the next month. It’s expected that the majority of the remaining 525 schools will also join in by the end of the academic year.
The project’s sensors, which can be used to measure levels of carbon dioxide, humidity, and light pressure, are connected to a specialist computer at the University of Edinburgh’s International Data Facility. The raw data produced by the sensors is then turned into accessible visual charts and graphs.
The IoT Schools Network was introduced in 2019 in a move to inspire students to consider STEM subjects and careers. According to the University of Edinburgh, experts have said that it’s already breathed new life into the region’s science classes, providing learners with the chance to explore and assess environmental data first-hand.
The project is backed by £9.5m in funding from the university’s DDI programme, which is part of the £1.3 billion Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal to drive the region’s growth. The aim of DDI itself is to institute the region as a European data capital through inward investment, entrepreneurship, research, and collaboration.
Commenting on the IoT Schools Network and its further rollout, Professor Sir Peter Mathieson, the principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Edinburgh, said: “Data is all around us, shaping the way we live, work and engage with each other: our goal to make the digital sector more accessible to young people is therefore clear.
“The Internet of Things schools’ network aims to give pupils the confidence, competence and ambition to use data to benefit themselves and their communities in an ever-changing digital world.
“Today, even more schools are taking part and by the end of this school year we will have rolled the project out to the vast majority of south east Scotland’s local authority schools, making it Europe’s largest IoT network.”
Neil Gray, the Scottish Government wellbeing economy secretary, also commented: “Internet of Things technology is transforming how we all live our lives, from checking the weather to inspiring green growing walls to improve the school environment.
“This Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal-funded project demonstrates to the next generation the value of science and technology.”
“By turning cutting edge research into businesses, we are supporting the entrepreneurs of the future and helping achieve the vision set out in the National Innovation Strategy for Scotland to become one of the most innovative small nations in the world over the next decade.”
The survey, which covers manufacturing and services, found a fresh fall in output across Scotland’s private sector in September, as the ongoing weakness in manufacturing production extended to services activity — which fell for the first time in eight months.
The headline Scotland Business Activity Index fell to 49.3 last month, which is below the 50.0 no-change threshold separating growth from contraction. However, the 0.7 decrease signals only a marginal reduction in business activity.
Respondent firms noted that uncertainty regarding the economic outlook — in addition to increased borrowing costs and inflationary pressures — had squeezed incomes, driving down customer activity.
Average prices charged for the provision of private sector goods and services rose during September, following August’s recent low. On this, respondents noted that higher cost burdens fed through to greater output charges.
Input prices also rose in September, with surveyed businesses blaming growing cost burdens on wage inflation and material cost increases. Though marked and strong in context of the historical data, the rate of input price inflation moderated to a 31-month low, with both sectors reporting easing cost pressures.
In terms of overall business confidence at Scottish private sector companies, sentiment increased to a three-month high, with firms expecting activity growth stemming from improved demand conditions, the launch of new products, and general market growth. That said, fears of increased competition and inflationary pressures resulting in fewer sales meant confidence levels have remained historically muted.
Regarding employment, an eighth monthly expansion in recruitment was recorded. However, underlying data showed that job creation was limited to the service sector and was marginal overall.
Speaking on the latest data, Judith Cruickshank, chair of the Scotland board at RBS, commented: “The third quarter ended with a fresh contraction in business activity across Scotland’s private sector, thereby marking the first fall in output since the start of the year.
“The downturn in activity was unsurprising as indicated by falling demand for Scottish goods and services for the third successive month in September. This, coupled with historically muted expectations for the outlook for output, signals a weak fourth quarter.
“Whether the downturn will gain momentum or if demand trends can be reversed will be something to watch for in the coming months.
“In some positive news, cost burdens rose at the weakest pace in over two-and-a-half years. Cooler price pressures should eventually lead to renewed demand.”
The coalition, which is spearheaded by civil liberties and privacy campaigning group Big Brother Watch, and backed by the likes of former Brexit secretary David Davis, Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey, and Green MP Caroline Lucas, warned against the “serious concerns” surrounding the deployment and use of the controversial technology.
Live and retroactive facial recognition technology is already being used for identification in policing and security settings within the UK and at varying stages.
While the coalition’s members stated that they hold differing views on certain aspects of live facial recognition surveillance, from its potential for discrimination to the sufficiency of its legal basis, they’ve unanimously agreed that police and private companies should “immediately stop using live facial recognition for public surveillance.”
The collective statement follows crime and policing minister, Chris Philip, announcing this week that the UK Government plans to use facial recognition technology to check camera footage against Britain’s passport database to identify the likes of shoplifters.
It also comes one month after the Defence and Security Accelerator, the Ministry of Defence’s body for finding and funding tech to be used by military, police, and security services, launched a “market exploration” of new facial recognition tech. It was commenced in part to identify “solutions” that could be deployed by the Home Office and police within the next 18 months.
While areas of UK Government look to expand its use of facial recognition tech, the European Parliament has recently endorsed a blanket ban on police using AI-powered facial recognition under its AI Act. Several U.S. cities, such as San Francisco and Boston, have banned governmental agencies’ use of facial recognition technology. Silkie Carlo, the director of Big Brother Watch, has called the UK an “outlier” in this regard.
“This important call from MPs to urgently stop live facial recognition represents the greatest involvement parliamentarians have ever had in Britain’s approach to facial recognition surveillance,” said Carlo.
“With the Government now planning to turn all of our passport photos into mugshots for facial recognition scanning, yet again absent any democratic scrutiny, this intervention could not come at a more important time. This dangerously authoritarian technology has the potential to turn populations into walking ID cards in a constant police line up.
“The UK’s reckless approach to face surveillance makes us a total outlier in the democratic world, especially against the backdrop of the EU’s proposed ban.
“As hosts of the AI summit in autumn, the UK should show leadership in adopting new technologies in a rights-respecting way, rather than a way that mirrors the dystopian surveillance practices of Saudi Arabia and China.
“There must be an urgent stop to live facial recognition, parliamentary scrutiny and a much wider democratic debate before we introduce such a privacy-altering technology to British life.”
Recent research conducted by Big Brother Watch found that over 89% of UK police facial recognition alerts to date have wrongly identified members of the public as people of interest.
The SMMT has continued its appeal after publishing the latest figures on the UK’s new car market. It found that new car registrations rose overall by 21% last month compared to the same time last year, with battery electric car registrations rising by almost 19%.
Electric car volume increases were wholly driven by fleet purchases however, with companies “drawn to the advanced technology, outstanding performance, reduced environmental impact and compelling tax incentives” of the vehicles, the industry body said.
Despite the increase in EV sales as a whole, private EV registrations fell by 14% in September, meaning that less than one in 10 private new car buyers chose an electric vehicle over a non-electric one.
The industry body stated that the decline “underlines the importance of providing these motorists with purchase incentives and other mechanisms to stimulate demand.” Such incentives could come in the form of purchase discounts, or vehicle tax breaks.
The latest figures from SMMT follow prime minister Rishi Sunak’s announcement last month, in which he stated that the UK was postponing its 2030 ban on petrol and diesel cars by five years, to 2035.
While citing upfront costs for families still being high as a primary cause, the prime minister also stated that “At least for now, it should be you, the consumer, that makes that choice, not government forcing you to do it.”
In a response to Sunak’s confirmation, Mike Hawes, the chief executive of SMMT, said: “Manufacturers will continue to put innovative new models on the market but consumers need encouragement to buy more than ever,” and that “Carrots move markets faster than sticks.”
While the UK has postponed the ban, the requirement for 22% of manufacturers’ sold cars and 10% of their vans to be electric, as part of the UK Government’s zero emissions vehicle mandate, remains unchanged. The mandate is set to come into force in 2024.
In a brand new statement following the publication of SMMT’s latest figures, Hawes has reiterated his call for consumer incentives: “With tougher EV targets for manufacturers coming into force next year, we need to accelerate the transition, encouraging all motorists to make the switch.
“This means adding carrots to the stick – creating private purchase incentives aligned with business benefits, equalising on-street charging VAT with off-street domestic rates and mandating chargepoint rollout in line with how electric vehicle sales are now to be dictated.
“The forthcoming Autumn Statement is the perfect opportunity to create the conditions that will deliver the zero emission mobility essential to our shared net zero ambition.”
Known as the Total-Body Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanner, the upcoming use of it within the facility aims to boost clinical research and improve the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of complex diseases.
The scanner, which is part of a £32 million investment from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) into the innovative technology, will be used to capture images of patients’ entire bodies more quickly, in more detail, and use less radiation compared to existing scanners.
In contrast to current technology, the Total-Body PET scanner can capture higher-calibre images of a patient’s entire body in real-time. It can also scan faster, thereby exposing patients to lower doses of radiation, meaning more patients can participate in the clinical trials.
Alongside the other new scanner in London, the Scottish scanner forms part of a new National PET Imaging Platform (NPIP), which is a partnership between Innovate UK, the Medicines Discovery Catapult (MDC), the Medical Research Council (MRC).
The platform aims to further advance healthcare research through data sharing and collaboration, helping to foster new treatments for involuted diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular and neurological diseases.
The NPIP Scotland Total-Body PET facility is due to be operational in 2024, and will be jointly managed by the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Speaking on the scanner’s capabilities, Dr David Lewis from the University of Glasgow, and co-director of the NPIP Scotland Centre, said: “Total-Body PET scanners are a quantum leap forward in the technology of body scanning, and we are proud that a partnership between the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow will jointly manage one of the first of these cutting-edge scanners in the UK.
“The Scotland Total-Body PET scanner will be a catalyst for innovative new research and cross-sector collaboration, ultimately benefitting patients by improving our understanding of complex diseases.”
Dr Juliana Maynard, the director of operations and engagement for the National PET Imaging Platform, and head of translational imaging at Medicines Discovery Catapult, also commented: “PET scanning is nothing short of transformational for patients who need it the most.
“Total-Body PET scanners can detect serious diseases with unprecedented speed and accuracy. NPIP will allow the kind of collaboration in imaging research the likes of which the UK has never seen before.
“It means that, collectively, we can power forward drug discovery with renewed confidence and drive world-leading capabilities in detection, diagnosis, and treatment.”
Dstl has run field trials of a prototype of the robot, which features X-ray Backscatter (XRBS) imaging technology attached to remote-controlled, movable robotic system. The images taken by Backscatter are then transmitted back to an operator in real-time.
Use of the robot would allow operators to look inside materials and containers, such as walls and cars, for hidden explosives or weapons without being near the potential threats themselves.
The trial manager for the project said: “X-ray Backscatter is an established technology but what we are trying to do is apply it to explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) — this approach is novel.
“Being able to robotically mount X-ray Backscatter provides additional situational awareness, potentially to see if there is a threat item without having to go anywhere near it.”
The project is a collaboration between Dstl and the U.S. Government, with the robot’s prototype having been produced by Rapiscan American Science and Engineering, the X-ray technologies firm.
The Dstl trial team has recently demonstrated the prototype’s capability to UK and U.S. stakeholders, using both simulated explosive and non-conventional threats as well as various firearms.
They showed the prototype detecting threats through a variety of wall materials, cars, metal lockers, plastic drums, and bags.
The project’s senior principal scientist commented: “The feedback we’ve had from our stakeholders who have come to see the system up here has been very positive, better than I could have hoped for really.
“I’ve been jotting things down – some direct quotes to use – and I think my favourite so far has been ‘I want one!’
“When they say something like that you know you’ve delivered something that has piqued their interest.”
The project team will use the feedback to assess what modifications would be needed to turn the prototype into a deployable asset on the battlefield, Dstl said.
The ICO tasked Survation, a polling and market research firm, to question UK adults on whether they think they’ve been tracked at work, if they feel it’s intrusive or not, and how comfortable they’d be taking a job at a firm which does monitor its employees.
In this context, monitoring can include tracking calls, messages, and keystrokes; taking screenshots, webcam footage, or audio recordings; or using specialist software to track activity.
The survey of over 1,000 people found that nearly one in five (19%) believe they’ve been monitored at work by their employer. Of those who believe so, tracking timekeeping and access was cited as the most common practice (40%), followed by monitoring emails, files, calls, or messages at 25%.
The majority (70%) of people said they’d find it intrusive to be monitored by an employer in any way, with just over one-fifth (21%) saying they wouldn’t find it intrusive. Younger respondents (18-24s) are least likely to find workplace monitoring intrusive (60% intrusive versus 28% not intrusive), while older respondents (55-64s) are the most likely (76% intrusive versus 17% not intrusive).
Further, 57% of the public would feel uncomfortable taking a new job if they knew their employer would be tracking them. Just under one-fifth (19%) would feel comfortable with this, with younger people again feeling more comfortable with being monitored (26%) compared to older people (14%).
Amid these findings — and the rise of remote working and developments in the technology available — the ICO has published guidance for employers to ensure full compliance with data protection laws if they implement monitoring tools and practices.
In addition to outlining the legal requirements, the guidance also includes best practice advice to help employers build trust with their teams and respect their privacy rights.
This includes: having a clearly defined purpose for monitoring and using the least intrusive means; only keeping information which is relevant and purposeful; and making workers aware of the extent they’re being tracked and the reasons behind why, among other steps.
Speaking on the new research and its guidance, Emily Keaney, deputy commissioner of regulatory policy at the ICO, said: “Our research shows that today’s workforce is concerned about monitoring, particularly with the rise of flexible working – nobody wants to feel like their privacy is at risk, especially in their own home.
“As the data protection regulator, we want to remind organisations that business interests must never be prioritised over the privacy of their workers. Transparency and fairness are key to building trust and it is crucial that organisations get this right from the start to create a positive environment where workers feel comfortable and respected.
“We are urging all organisations to consider both their legal obligations and their workers’ rights before any monitoring is implemented. While data protection law does not prevent monitoring, our guidance is clear that it must be necessary, proportionate and respect the rights of workers. We will take action if we believe people’s privacy is being threatened.”
Last year, after conducing its own survey which found that 28% of workers believe workplace monitoring has increased since COVID-19, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) said that “Worker surveillance tech has taken off during this pandemic – and now risks spiralling out of control.”
Through the research, the union body also found that the financial services (74%), wholesale and retail (73%), and utilities (73%) sectors have the greatest portion of employees reporting being tracked at work.
Welcome to the latest edition of the DIGIT Deal Roundup.
From energy transition AI firm Continuum Industries securing over £8 million in new funding, to Orkney receiving £15 million from the UK Government to deploy trial electric ferry boats, you’ll find the standout stories from September below.
Let’s take a look at them.
Funding and Investments
SNIB Commits Over £445M in Investment Since Founding
The Scottish National Investment Bank (SNIB) has released its second full year accounts, detailing its investment history since it was established little over two years ago.
Since its establishment, the Bank has committed over £445 million in long-term strategic investment. A further £703m has been attracted in from other sources, ensuring the Scottish economy has benefitted from well over £1.3bn of support.
The Bank’s activity has spanned across a range of businesses and projects, including net-zero, biotechnology, broadband connectivity, and improving communities or harnessing innovation.
“I believe we can become one of the most respected impact investors in the industry, generating social, environmental and economic returns for the people of Scotland. I look forward to working with the team and our many stakeholders, on delivering the Bank’s missions on behalf of the people of Scotland,” said Al Denholm, CEO.
Continuum Industries, the Edinburgh-based company behind Optioneer, an bAI-powered infrastructure development platform, has announced that it’s secured $10 million (£8.2m) in new funding.
The latest funding round supporting the firm and its platform was led by Singular, the venture capital company, with participation from previous investors such as Techstart Ventures, Credo, and Playfair, as well as angels including executives from SSE, Skyscanner, and UiPath.
The new batch of investment, which now brings the company’s total funding to $15.5m (£12.7m), is set to support Continuum Industries’ continued growth as it aims to double employee headcount and expand into new territories over the next 12 months.
“Having set out to raise a round in challenging economic conditions, we’re pleased to have found new investors in the shape of Singular – alongside our previous backers,” said Grzegorz Marecki, the firm’s co-founder and CEO.
Kelvin Capital Closed H1 With Record Number of Investment
Kelvin Capital, the Glasgow-based investment syndicate, has closed the first half of 2023 having concluded record investment totalling £7.8 million into its portfolio of Scottish technology companies.
The first six months of the year saw funding rounds, with co-investment from Scottish Enterprise, completed for five of its portfolio companies: the agritechs Dyneval, WellFish Diagnostics, and Peacock Technology, as well as behavioural science and technology firm KultraLab and eBike motor designer and manufacturer FreeFlow Technologies.
“The quality of Scottish-based businesses working in disruptive or pioneering technology continues to increase and we are thrilled to be backing them at the forefront of their global ambitions and journeys,” said Stuart McKee, Kelvin Capital’s chair.
Stellar Omada Receives £4.5M From Investment Firm BGF
Investment firm BGF has completed a £4.5 million investment in Edinburgh-headquartered technology services company Stellar Omada.
Founded in 2018 by CEO Colin Frame, Stellar Omada specialises in digital transformation, testing services, and programme delivery for clients in the financial services sector.
The business has experienced rapid growth to date, delivering £16.3m revenue in 2022 up from £9.1m in 2021, with clients in the banking, pensions, and investment management sectors, including some of the UK’s largest banks and pension providers.
Colin Frame, CEO of Stellar Omada, said: “We are delighted to be partnering with BGF for our next phase of growth. We have ambitious plans for the future, focusing on continuing to drive growth with both existing and new customers. This investment will play a vital part in helping us achieving those goals.”
Mocean Energy, an Edinburgh-based wave energy company, has received £3.2m in funding from the EU to create and launch a 250kW wave machine in Orkney.
Named Blue Horizon 250, the device is set to be manufactured in Scotland and will be deployed in a grid-connected berth at the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney as early as 2025.
The Edinburgh firm has been awarded £3.2m in Phase 3 of EuropeWave, a pre-commercial procurement programme, funded through the EU and managed in collaboration with Wave Energy Scotland, the Basque Energy Agency, and Ocean Energy Europe.
“We have already demonstrated our technology successfully at small scale and this programme will allow us to build a significantly larger machine based on our proven hinged raft design, and incorporate our novel direct drive generator,” said Cameron McNatt, the co-founder and managing director of Mocean Energy.
Krucial, the Scottish scaleup which utilises space technology to provide digital solutions, has landed a funding boost to the tune of $3.7 million (£3m), as it continues its expansion into international markets.
The latest funding round into the scaleup — formerly known as R3-IoT — was led by existing investor Scottish National Investment Bank. Scottish Enterprise, the University of Strathclyde, and AzurX, the Dubai-based space and tech investor, joined SNIB, with Scottish law firm Burness Paull advising on the investment.
The total amount raised by Krucial now stands at more than $7.5 million (£6m), with the new batch of financing set to be used to accelerate growth in the firm’s core markets, which include energy, aquaculture, agriculture, and rail, both in the UK and internationally.
“This funding is a clear vote of confidence in Krucial’s cutting-edge solution – especially given wider macroeconomic conditions,” said Allan Cannon, one half of the firm’s founding team, alongside Kevin Quillien.
Glasgow diagnostics spinout Microplate Dx has closed a £2.5m seed funding round to develop its point-of-care diagnostic platform which can confirm the presence of bacteria and guide a patient’s doctor to effective treatment by identifying effective antibiotics to use and which ones to avoid.
Investors in this funding round include existing investors Deepbridge Capital LLP and the University of Strathclyde, in addition to new investors Scottish Enterprise, impact investor SIS Ventures, and Boston-based life sciences investor Thairm Bio, in line with the company’s plans for US market entry.
Professor Sir Jim McDonald, principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Strathclyde, said: “Microplate Dx is a hugely innovative University spinout that is on an incredibly exciting journey to develop cutting edge technology that has the potential to transform diagnostic techniques and positively impact people’s health and well-being.
Neuranics Raises £1.9M in Funding Led by Par Equity
Neuranics, a startup specialising in magnetic sensor innovation, has raised £1.9m in pre-seed funding led by Par Equity, with participation from GU Holdings Ltd, Old College Capital, and Creator Fund. The startup, founded in 2021, is a joint spinout from the University of Glasgow and the University of Edinburgh.
Neuranics develops magnetic sensors integrated with semiconductor technology for health, fitness, and metaverse applications. The startup’s patented technology uses scalable spintronics sensors, powered by semiconductors, to detect tiny magnetic signals from organs of the body.
“Our breakthrough technology will enable much better sensor resolution for human-machine interface, will have huge benefits for health and fitness devices, and also controllers in the metaverse,” said CEO Noel McKenna.
Trickle Secures £1M Investment to Continue Growth Plans
Scottish workplace productivity startup Trickle has secured a £1m investment led by Equity Gap, with NoBa Capital, a London-based VC firm that invests in tech-enabled businesses shaping the Future of Work, and Scottish Enterprise also participating in the round.
Trickle, led by founder and CEO Paul Reid, plans to grow its team, increase its presence in the private sector, and add features to its tech platform which enables more inclusive communication across organisations and boosts productivity. Trickle’s customers include NHS Scotland, NHS England, CGI, and Johnston Carmichael.
Paul Reid said: “We look forward to continuing our growth plans with the support of our investors, and we’re seeing significant opportunities to work with more companies in the private sector.”
SolarisKit Awarded £150K From the British Design Fund
Dundee based startup SolarisKit — creator of the ‘world’s first’ flat-pack, self-assembled solar water heater — has secured a £150k investment from the British Design Fund.
The company’s founder, Dr Faisal Ghani, is a mechanical engineer with 20 years’ experience in solar heating. He was struck with the idea for his heating product while working as an academic at Heriot-Watt University, where he was lecturing on renewable energy and engineering.
SolarisKit’s completely self-assembled solar water heater doesn’t require a pump or electricity and can be fitted in around 20 minutes without the need for tools or an installer.
“This funding will support us to expand our reach, accelerate product development, enhance our manufacturing capabilities and enter new markets,” said Dr Ghani.
The UK Space Agency (UKSA) has announced up to £65 million in funding for homegrown space technology and application innovations.
The UKSA’s National Space Innovation Programme (NSIP) will support “high-risk, high-reward” space projects designed by British organisations that can drive innovation, accelerate the route to market, and catalyse investment in the UK space sector.
Speaking on space tech and the new funding available, Dr Paul Bate, the UKSA’s chief executive, said: “In today’s interconnected world, space technologies have become critical to almost every aspect of our daily lives.
“The National Space Innovation Programme will support the UK’s most ambitious space technology projects and their potential to address real-world challenges, to catalyse investment, deliver new missions and capabilities, and harness the power of space to improve lives.”
Over £50 million in government funding has been awarded to 30 cutting-edge manufacturing projects including rapid-charging motorcycles and self-driving cars.
The funding will seek to boost the UK’s innovation of clean, green technologies, helping to create jobs and grow the economy.
Chancellor of the exchequer Jeremy Hunt said: “From farm tractors fuelled by hydrogen to rapid-charge first responder motorcycles, these projects receiving funding today show we are not short of innovators in this country.
“By supporting growth in the industries of the future, including through better regulation, we are delivering on our plan to get the economy growing and make the UK the best place in the world to start and grow a business.”
Orkney to Trial Electric Vessels Following £15M in Funding
In a bid to reduce carbon emissions, Orkney was given £15m of the UK Government’s £80m Zero Emission Vessel and Infrastructure (ZEVI) fund to deploy two fully electric ferry boats for a three year trial. The ferries will remain under the ownership of Orkney Ferries upon the completion of the trial period.
With the funding, Orkney will add two ferries to its fleet. One will be 12 meters and go between the main town of Kirkwall and the islands of Shapinsay, Rousay, Egilsay, and Wyre on a year-round daily service.
A larger, 24-meter vessel, with room for light cargo will go between Kirkwall and the islands of Westray, Ebay, Sanday, and Stronsay up to five times a day.
“Whilst this is tremendous news, this latest development must not be confused with our drive to secure funding for replacement ferries,” said council leader James Stockan.
“This work is about looking at how we can, in the future, decarbonise our fleet – a key point of discussion with the Scottish Government.”
Over £9M Awarded to 9 Net Zero Technology Projects
The Net Zero Technology Centre (NZTC) has announced the nine winners of its 2023 Open Innovation Programme. The funding competition focused on developing and deploying data and digital technologies that will enable the delivery of the UK’s net zero ambitions.
A total of 143 businesses from across the globe applied for up to £500K each in funding from NZTC. The entire awarded sum surpasses £9 million, comprising £3 million from NZTC and over £6 million co-funded by industry partners.
The winning projects will support the transition towards net zero, trialling and deploying technology within the UK continental shelf. The winners are: Aircube, FutureOn, Heriot-Watt University, Nauticus, Predyct, Quasset, SUPCON, VISR, and XL Group.
Rebecca Allison, chief operations officer at the Net Zero Technology Centre, commented: “We had a fantastic response to our latest call for ideas and the competition was strong, which demonstrates the appetite for developing net zero focused technologies. These technologies will accelerate progress towards net zero and facilitate the energy transition.”
North Ayrshire to Take Part in £4M Smart Street Lamp Pilot
North Ayrshire is one of six UK authorities receiving a portion of the £1.3 million available from a UK Government pilot. The £1.3m Smart Infrastructure Pilots Programme (SIPP) — of which the Scottish council area will receive £242,765 — is bolstered by a further £2.7m fronted by the local authorities, bringing the total amount available to £4m.
The pilot aims to digitise urban infrastructure by using street lamps to act as EV charging stations, as well as to improve wireless connectivity. Both technologies are in high demand, and require innovative ideas to hit growth targets.
“We want to ensure that towns and cities across the UK are right at the forefront of this connectivity revolution, ready to seize the opportunities it will bring for local communities, which is exactly what these pilots are about,” said minister for data and digital infrastructure Sir John Whittingdale.
Funding of up to £1.5 million will be delivered through the Scottish Government’s Pathways Pre-Start Fund this financial year to provide support, mentoring, and advice services for people thinking about taking the first steps towards creating a startup company.
It will have a particular focus on closing the gender gap and widening participation in entrepreneurship, and is the first step to developing a pre-start network to bring more people into the entrepreneurship pipeline.
“Through the jobs they provide and problems they solve, new businesses play a fundamental role in growing our economy while creating better futures for our people and communities. That is why we must inspire more Scots to view starting a business as a viable path,” said wellbeing economy and fair work secretary Neil Gray.
“We want to cultivate a thriving, world-leading entrepreneurial ecosystem and our Programme for Government 2023/24 sets out a very clear vision and tangible actions to help this and future generations of entrepreneurs succeed.”
Scots Gov Supplies Digital Security Projects With £500K
Projects providing practical help to support people tackle the growing risks posed by online crime will share a £500,000 fund aimed at ensuring a digitally secure and resilient Scotland.
Organisations, including Scottish Union Learning and Community Enterprise, will use the £500,000 funding to provide workshops aimed at tackling scams and internet safety, deliver training to upskill under-represented groups into careers within cybersecurity, and provide digital advice in different languages.
Justice and home affairs secretary Angela Constance said: “Cyber-crime such as fraud and data theft can have a devastating impact on people, communities and businesses.
“The Scottish Government is committed to building cyber resilience within all our communities and this funding will enable many more people across the country keep themselves safe and secure when going online by supporting them to gain practical knowledge and skills to recognise and avoid cyber-attacks.”
The Community Ownership Fund, which is injecting nearly £1 million into four projects in Scotland, has allocated £300,000 to the burgh of Kinross to establish a new aerospace discovery centre.
The centre aims to be a hub for interactive learning and exhibitions, looking to help inspire young individuals about aerospace related careers in STEM.
Other Scottish projects that will benefit from the Community Ownership Fund is:
Glasgow, which is receiving £256,793 to build a community net zero hub, focused on promoting low-carbon learning and training.
Stirling, which is receiving from £253,032 to bring a shop building in Stirling into community ownership, which will create a commercially sustainable village shop to cater to the local needs.
Aberdeenshire, which is receiving £183,000 to redevelop the Laurencekirk Community Centre into a larger, revitalised community hub capable of hosting local events.
Latest Inward Investment Catalyst Fund Round Awards £50K
Research into the relationship between financial vulnerability and mental health, and the development of a portable system for monitoring hormonal fluctuations, are among the latest projects to have been backed by a national inward investment fund.
The Scottish Inward Investment Catalyst Fund was launched by Interface and Scottish Government to support businesses not yet located in Scotland to work with Scottish academic institutions. The last round of the fund resulted in 5 projects being awarded up to £10,000 each.
Minister for small business, innovation, tourism and trade, Richard Lochhead, said: “The latest round of the Inward Investment Catalyst Fund has once again attracted diverse and innovative projects, with the expertise and support of our highly regarded universities and academia playing a significant role in attracting potential investors to consider Scotland and apply for the funding.”
The five funded projects are by: Serene (England) and University of St Andrews, Graymatics (Singapore) and University of Strathclyde, Reaforma Ltd (England) and University of Strathclyde, Salop Design & Engineering Ltd (England) and University of Strathclyde, viO HealthTech (England and U.S.) and Heriot-Watt University.
The deadline for the next round of the Inward Investment Catalyst Fund is 17th November, 2023.
Hop, the Scots hospitality property management software company, has expanded its customer base across three continents with a deal with the prestigious Kings Beach Village in Barbados.
The contract sees Hop provide single-point software to enable the company to operate all aspects of its luxury tropical villa complex on the Caribbean island’s West Coast.
The deal represents further international growth for Hop, with advanced discussions also underway with potential new clients in Nigeria – where it already has customers – and in Portuguese markets.
“This contract, on top of securing new business in the UK, Europe, Florida and Nigeria shows what a Scottish start-up can do and should encourage others to think internationally,” said Jon Erasmus, one of the company’s three co-founders, who also co-owns the Glen Mhor Hotel in Inverness.
“The fact that two of our directors remain hoteliers in Scotland means we can develop our product to meet the new economic circumstances all hospitality businesses are having to operate within, whether in Scotland or overseas, and we will continue to work with and bring in more partners, globally.”
That’s it for this month’s DIGIT Deal Roundup. Be sure to subscribe to the DIGIT newsletter to always stay up-to-date on the latest Scottish tech news!
A new joint initiative from Hays, the recruitment specialist, and FinTech Scotland, the fintech cluster management organisation, has been launched in a move to highlight candidate skills and experience directly to Scotland’s many emerging fintechs.
Instead of employers advertising job vacancies and candidates submitting their credentials to apply, the new “FinTech Talent” platform will enable professionals to showcase their skills to the over 220 fintech companies in Scotland and be subsequently matched to suitable opportunities.
Interested professionals can register through the FinTech Scotland website, where they will be invited to upload their CV. An AI process will then search and match CVs to specific vacancies, recommending candidates to employers which they can then review.
The initiative is being launched as part of the Scotland Fintech Festival, with a programme of events, workshops, networking, and conferences being held across Scotland.
“The Scottish fintech community is thriving and has seen the number of fintech companies grow from 26 in 2018 to more than 220 today” said Justin Black, business director of Hays Technology Scotland.
“The sector is expected to create over 15,000 new jobs by 2025. As a strategic partner with FinTech Scotland, we’ve created this talent community to position potential candidates in front of fintech employers to fill this need in as efficient a way as possible.”
FinTech Scotland itself supports a cluster of over 220 fintech businesses of various sizes, as well as large established financial institutions, regulators, universities, citizen groups, technology and professional services firms, and government bodies. In 2022, Scottish fintechs received over £305m in funding, an increase of over 200% on the previous year.
“We are really excited about the launch of the new ‘FinTech Talent’ platform. In collaboration with Hays, this initiative will seek to support Scotland’s dynamic fintech community at a time when the global skills gap continues to grow,” commented Nicola Anderson, FinTech Scotland’s CEO.
“As we unveil this innovative solution during Scotland Fintech Festival, we’re thrilled to empower professionals on their career journeys and help them find their perfect fintech match. It’s an important development for both candidates and the fintech industry.”
The Bank of Scotland’s Business Barometer surveys 1,200 businesses monthly, providing signals about UK economic trends both regionally and nationwide.
This month, Scots companies reported lower confidence in their business prospects at 39%, which is down 14 points from August. When combined with their optimism in the economy, which is up 10 points to 29%, this gives a headline confidence reading of 33%.
This is comparatively lower than the rate currently seen at a national level: overall UK business confidence fell five points from 41% to 36% in September. Firms’ outlook on their trading prospects remained at 41% despite a drop of five points last month, while their optimism in the UK economy dropped by seven points to 30%.
Companies in London reported the highest levels of business confidence in September — and for the second consecutive month — at 44%, while Yorkshire-based firms reported the second highest reading at 40%, followed by businesses in the North West at 38%.
Commenting on the September numbers, Hann-Ju Ho, senior economist at Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking, said: “While the gains in business confidence we saw in August have not been maintained, it’s important to see the wider trend clearly reflected in the data which paints a very different picture to this time 12 months ago, when the economy was in significant difficulties.
“Although the economic environment remains uncertain with inflation and interest rate pressures playing their part, the recent decision by the Bank of England to leave interest rates unchanged is likely to help businesses feel more upbeat about the future, which may underpin confidence in the last three months of the year.”
Chris Lawrie, regional director for Scotland at Bank of Scotland Commercial Banking, also commented, saying: “Despite a small dip this month business confidence in Scotland remains positive, with many firms seeking opportunities to grow by expanding their teams and investing in new markets.”
The Scottish businesses taking part in the Barometer identified their top target areas for growth in the next six months as: evolving their offer (40%), entering new markets (39%), and investing in their team (30%).
Further, a net balance of 31% of businesses in Scotland expect to increase staff levels through recruitment over the next year, up seven points on last month.
The Cabinet Office stated the efforts are being set in motion with a new digital apprenticeship programme, which supports the hiring of 500 early-career entrants into digital roles across government this financial year.
Through the programme, both civil servants and new entrants to be recruited into different in-demand roles, such as cybersecurity technologists and software developers.
The 2,000 other opportunities will include 1,300 additional digital apprenticeship programme roles, and 700 roles created through the expansion of initiatives already in place, such as the Software Developer Programme.
The announcement comes just two months after minister for the Cabinet Office, Jeremy Quin, set out his vision to modernise and reform the Civil Service in a speech to Policy Exchange.
Commenting on the announcement, Alex Burghart, parliamentary secretary for the Cabinet Office, said: “We want the next generation of tech talent to be able to learn their trade helping government to make services better for the public.
“These apprenticeships are going to build great new digital careers and capabilities both in Whitehall and across the country.”
Meanwhile, through the recently announced Digital Secondments Programme, UK tech experts are being called to help bring external knowledge in-house, and give civil servants the opportunity to work with professionals from successful businesses.
Both the Digital Secondments Programme and apprenticeship recruitment initiative have been developed to support a new target for 6% of Civil Service to be working in digital, data, and technology.
Jeremy Quin himself also commented, saying that the “announcement drives forward our plans for a modern Civil Service equipped with the skills and capabilities needed to harness the power of digital, data and technology.
“By attracting and retaining the best talent, we will keep pace with technological change and deliver more efficient services for the British public.”
The news comes as an update for the Central Digital and Data Office’s (CDDO) 2022-25 roadmap for digital and data is published. The roadmap was launched to support the aim of bringing more tech professionals in-house and subsequently bettering public services.
The updated roadmap announces the publication of a new framework for the government’s use of generative AI, and also a requirement for departments using outdated IT systems to boost plans for modernising technology.
According to analysis undertaken when the roadmap was published in 2022, there’s an estimated potential saving of over £1 billion in taxpayer money through the digital transformation of services, eliminating the costs of paper-based services and processes.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has announced that the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot can once again browse the internet, thereby providing users with more up-to-date information.
The firm took to social media platform X to announce “Browse with Bing,” stating that with the feature, ChatGPT is no longer limited to the data it had been trained on, which didn’t go past September 2021.
Underpinned by Microsoft’s search engine, the feature “is particularly useful for tasks that require up-to-date information, such as helping you with technical research, trying to choose a bike, or planning a vacation,” OpenAI wrote.
Currently, the feature is only available to users on the ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise plans. However, it will be expanded to “all users soon.”
Browse with Bing was technically launched as a beta feature in May, but its use was paused two months later over concerns on how it could circumvent paywalls.
In an update in July, the AI company wrote that “We have learned that the ChatGPT Browse beta can occasionally display content in ways we don’t want. For example, if a user specifically asks for a URL’s full text, it might inadvertently fulfill this request.”
This has now seemingly been rectified, with the company stating that “Since the original launch of browsing in May, we received useful feedback. Updates include following robots.txt and identifying user agents so sites can control how ChatGPT interacts with them.”
Sam Altman, OpenAI’s co-founder and chief executive, reposted the announcement via his X account, adding: “we are so back.”
The All Seeing, All Speaking — and All Searching — ChatGPT
The Browse with Bing announcement quickly follows another notable ChatGPT announcement this week: the rolling out of new voice and image capabilities.
Over the next few weeks, OpenAI is set to provide these features to Plus and Enterprise users, with voice being available on iOS and Android devices, and images on all platforms.
The new voice capability — which allows for “back-and-forth conversation,” and is “capable of generating human-like audio from text and a few seconds of sample speech” — is underpinned by a “new text-to-speech model.”
OpenAI noted that it recognises the wider potential for voice technology to be used for dubious means, including impersonation and fraud. “This is why we are using this technology to power a specific use case—voice chat. Voice chat was created with voice actors we have directly worked with,” wrote the AI company.
As for the new image capabilities, it’s possible to show ChatGPT images and start a conversation or seek advice from it that way. “Troubleshoot why your grill won’t start, explore the contents of your fridge to plan a meal, or analyze a complex graph for work-related data,” the AI company suggested.
While the features are again limited to Plus and Enterprise users, OpenAI has plans to roll them out to “other groups of users, including developers, soon after.”
The UKSA’s National Space Innovation Programme (NSIP) will support “high-risk, high-reward” space projects designed by British organisations that can drive innovation, accelerate the route to market, and catalyse investment in the UK space sector.
The first tranche of up to £34 million in funding is now open to proposals for novel and commercially valuable space technologies, satellite applications, and related services. The remaining funding is set to be split across further calls in 2024 and 2025, with projects running until March 2027.
Since its pilot launch in 2020, NSIP has provided UK organisations with over £25 million in funding, including SatVu, which used the support to develop a Middle Wavelength Infra-red (MWIR) satellite. Cited as the first MWIR satellite and launched in June 2023, it uses Earth observation data to gain insights into building emissions that can improve energy use and reduce emissions.
Northumbria University, another recipient of NSIP funding, used the financing to design, test, and build a new miniaturised laser optical communications terminal to improve inter-satellite data sharing and support future space science missions.
Speaking on space tech and the new funding available, Dr Paul Bate, the UKSA’s chief executive, said: “In today’s interconnected world, space technologies have become critical to almost every aspect of our daily lives.
“The National Space Innovation Programme will support the UK’s most ambitious space technology projects and their potential to address real-world challenges, to catalyse investment, deliver new missions and capabilities, and harness the power of space to improve lives.”
George Freeman MP, minister for space at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), also commented, saying: “Our space sector is constantly advancing thanks to pioneering new ideas from our world-class scientists and technologists that push the potential of British innovation at its best.
“Investing in these projects not only bolsters the UK’s seat at the table of the global space community, but it unlocks future business and job opportunities that will accelerate the growth of our nation’s £17.5 billion space sector.
The upcoming £65 million is but the latest batch of funding in UKSA’s seemingly constant stream of financial backing, provided in a bid to further push forward the progress of the UK’s space industry.
Just last month, for instance, UKSA announced £15 million in funding targeted towards satellite Earth observation technologies. Days before that, UKSA and DSIT proposed a £160 million scheme to fund satellite communications development to boost broadband connectivity and 5G coverage.
Despite such investment, a recently published report commissioned by UKSA and DSIT found that the UK’s space sector is being “throttled” by the ongoing skills gap. Specifically, over half (52%) of space organisations reported skills gaps in their current workforce, with over two-thirds (71%) of those with gaps describing the subsequent impacts as “major” or “moderate.”
In particular, software and data skills are the most sought after, with 72% of organisations having a gap in these technical areas — much higher than electronics design (43%) and systems engineering (39%). Further, half of organisations expect that their space skill needs will differ in three years’ time, with 81% of these respondents expecting they will need yet more software and data skills.
The Longitude Prize on Dementia is a £4.42 million prize, funded by Alzheimer’s Society and Innovate UK, to drive the creation of technology-based tools that help those with the early stages of dementia to live independent, more fulfilled lives.
The nationally representative poll of GPs was undertaken to better understand appetite amongst primary care doctors for the use of technology in helping people and families affected by dementia.
It found that family doctors were especially keen to see new technologies designed to help people with dementia to maintain their autonomy. Nearly nine in ten (88%) GPs believe that people living with dementia who can live in their own homes will live more fulfilling lives, with over three quarters (77%) believing it will help people to live longer.
However, 83% of GPs voiced frustration that their dementia patients do not receive enough support at home. While there are some existing technologies designed for people with dementia, most focus on monitoring a person living with the condition, rather than supporting them continue doing day-to-day activities — a concern shared by 86% of the GPs surveyed.
Many of the GPs polled also believe their patients would benefit from responsive tech such as an intuitive app to help them navigate their community, or smart glasses that could tell them who they are looking at.
As it stands, GPs are already suggesting to their dementia patients to use existing technology, with 64% of family doctors recommending tech-related hacks, including adding simple reminders to take medications on phones and smart speakers.
Relatedly, 69% of respondents say their patients with dementia are increasingly relying on technology as a memory tool, such as storing relationship details in their phone contacts (e.g. “Anne – daughter”).
Kate Lee, CEO of Alzheimer’s Society, which is a co-funder of the Longitude Prize on Dementia, said: “It’s encouraging that many GPs join us in seeing the huge potential that tech could bring for the 900,000 people in the UK living with dementia.
“Dementia is a progressive condition set to affect one in three people born today, so we must think more broadly about how to end the devastation it causes, by helping people manage their symptoms and stay independent for longer.
“It’s exciting that soon we may have potential new treatments that could slow the progress of Alzheimer’s disease, but alongside this we need to urgently push forward ways of helping people with dementia right now. We believe tech involving people with dementia, for people with dementia, can be a key way of doing this.”
In June 2023, the Longitude Prize on Dementia announced the 24 semi-finalists developing new assistive technologies for people living with dementia, each receiving grants of £80,000. The tools include virtual reality devices to reduce anxiety, smart glasses that tell a user what they are looking at, technology to help fill in broken speech as someone loses their speaking abilities, and an augmented reality navigation app.
Between now and next summer, the semi-finalists will work with people living with dementia and their carers to refine their solutions before the five most promising ideas progress to the final stages of the competition.
In total, £3.42 million in seed funding and development grants will be given to the range of targeted solutions, with a £1 million first prize to be awarded in 2026.
Kelvin Capital, the Glasgow-based investment syndicate, has closed the first half of 2023 having concluded record investment totalling £7.8 million into its portfolio of Scottish technology companies.
The first six months of the year saw funding rounds, with co-investment from Scottish Enterprise, completed for five of its portfolio companies: the agritechs Dyneval, WellFish Diagnostics, and Peacock Technology, as well as behavioural science and technology firm KultraLab and eBike motor designer and manufacturer FreeFlow Technologies.
In the same period last year, £6.4m was invested into its roster of businesses, marking H1 2023’s number of £7.8m as an increase of 22%.
Additionally, the first two months of H2 2023 has seen a further £1.8m secured for three more portfolio companies: Innovatium, a technology firm focusing on renewable energy, Sofant Technologies, the mobile satellite communications tech company, and Biotangents, the veterinary diagnostic devices business.
Kelvin Capital itself is founded and managed by industry experts John McNicol, Angus Hay, and Susie Fisher, and is chaired by Stuart McKee, the former global head of corporate finance at PwC.
It boasts over 340 UK and international angel investors, a diverse portfolio of 20 investee companies, and has secured investments of over £106 million from its syndicate members and external co-investors.
On the record H1, McKee said: “The quality of Scottish-based businesses working in disruptive or pioneering technology continues to increase and we are thrilled to be backing them at the forefront of their global ambitions and journeys.
“Our investment activity continues to grow with the first half of 2023 raising the most for our portfolio businesses to date. Notably, the latest funding round concluded for WellFish Diagnostics, a business we have backed since early 2022, was oversubscribed and closed with new private equity investment coming from international investors based in London and Norway.”
McNicol, director of Kelvin Capital, added further: “As well as providing funding to exciting early-stage businesses in the Enabling Technologies, AgriTech, and Design & Manufacturing sectors, we also provide valuable industry expertise to companies’ boards from individuals from our membership and vast network with high level knowledge of the sectors to support and drive the companies’ growth ambitions.
“It is also notable that our portfolio of businesses is maturing from early stage companies into established and recognised international operators in their sectors. This can be illustrated by the impressive deals and agreements that are being secured across the world.”
Since their inception, the five companies that received funding in H1 2023 have created 70 new high-quality, full-time jobs, with KultraLab specifically employing six people in its new engineering team in Edinburgh, and with plans to recruit for a further six roles upon securing additional funding.
Meanwhile, Dyneval, also in Edinburgh, has seen its team grow to 20 in just 18 months.
Optioneer has been created to help to accelerate the global energy transition by supporting infrastructure developers to improve workplace efficiency, while minimising impact on the environment and communities.
With the platform, energy companies can better visualise, analyse, and assess routing options for power lines, onshore and offshore cables, and pipelines for hydrogen, water, and CO2.
The latest funding round supporting the firm and its platform was led by Singular, the venture capital company, with participation from previous investors such as Techstart Ventures, Credo, and Playfair, as well as angels including executives from SSE, Skyscanner, and UiPath.
Continuum Industries, which was established in 2018 after the founding team met at the University of Edinburgh, currently operates in the UK, US, the Netherlands, Spain, and Italy. It counts the National Grid, SSEN Transmission, National Gas Transmission, Fred., Olsen Seawind, and Iberdrola Group among its customers.
The new batch of investment, which now brings the company’s total funding to $15.5m (£12.7m), is set to support Continuum Industries’ continued growth as it aims to double employee headcount and expand into new territories over the next 12 months.
Speaking on the mission with Optioneer as well as the latest funding round, Grzegorz Marecki, co-founder and CEO of Continuum Industries, said: “We have an exciting and important opportunity to accelerate the march of the infrastructure industry into the digital age and make a lasting impact for people and the planet.
“Having set out to raise a round in challenging economic conditions, we’re pleased to have found new investors in the shape of Singular – alongside our previous backers – who didn’t just see the potential of our technology, but the urgent need to diverge from traditional approaches to transform the sector, and showed a real hunger to support that change.”
Henri Tilloy, who’s a partner at Singular, also commented, saying: “Infrastructure is a vital, but under-discussed, aspect of the energy transition.
“Without robust, future-fit infrastructure to transport the growing amount of energy and utilities we need – especially as renewables come online in larger and larger volumes – all the innovation that goes into new generation and storage solutions will be wasted.
“Grzegorz and the team at Continuum have built impressive technology and are already working with some significant names to enable infrastructure to be delivered at a pace that matches the urgency of the situation.
“We’re pleased to be supporting them, and look forward to seeing the company grow from strength to strength as it looks beyond the planning stage to become the definitive platform for the infrastructure industry.”
The European Commission has announced that it’s re-imposed a fine of around €376 million (£327m) on technology giant Intel, citing previous abuse of its market dominance in the computer chip industry.
In 2009, the Commission imposed a €1 billion (£896m) fine on the chip maker for “abusing its dominant position in the market for x86 CPUs,” specifically on the charges that it had engaged with practices known as “conditional rebates” and “naked restrictions.”
The Commission said that the decision was based on findings that Intel had given wholly or partially hidden rebates to computer manufacturers on the condition that they bought all, or almost all, of their x86 CPUs (conditional rebates). Further, that it paid computer manufacturers to halt or delay the launch of specific products containing competitors’ x86 CPUs and to limit the sales channels available to these products (naked restrictions).
However, in 2022, the EU’s General Court partially annulled the 2009 Commission’s decision, stating that the “Commission’s analysis is incomplete and does not make it possible to establish to the requisite legal standard that the rebates at issue were capable of having, or likely to have, anticompetitive effects.” This then led to the rejection of the fine imposed on Intel in its entirety.
The Commission is now taking the decision to impose a fine on Intel only concerning the naked restrictions. It stated that “these restrictions took place between November 2002 and December 2006 and consisted in payments made by Intel to three computer manufacturers (i.e., HP, Acer and Lenovo) to halt or delay the launch of specific products containing competitors’ x86 CPUs and to limit the sales channels available to these products.”
Commenting on the new decision, commissioner Didier Reynders, who’s in charge of competition policy, said: “We are re-imposing a €376.36 million fine on Intel for having abused its dominant position in the computer chips market.
“Intel paid its customers to limit, delay or cancel the sale of products containing computer chips of its main rival. This is illegal under our competition rules. Our decision shows the Commission’s commitment to ensure that very serious antitrust breaches do not go unsanctioned.”
Through a recent survey of over 1,100 small business decision-makers across the UK, Novuna Business Finance, the asset finance provider, found that 35% of Scots firms anticipate growth in the coming months, more than their counterparts in England (32%) and Wales (27%). The percentage of 35% is the highest figure in the last five quarters, and is similar to levels seen pre-pandemic.
Additionally, the rate of Scottish businesses expecting a downturn is relatively low. Only 16% foresee moderate or severe contraction in the next three months, with these figures lower than those from England (17%) and Wales (19%), as well as the three-year average of 19% since the pandemic’s onset.
In a bid to drive growth, 71% of small businesses across Scotland are currently implementing targeted initiatives, including cost management activities such as reducing fixed costs (67%), enhancing cash flow (30%), and more rigorously pursuing overdue payments (18%).
Relatedly, there’s been a marked uptick in businesses planning to purchase new equipment, nearly doubling from 12% a year ago to 23% now. The data also uncovered a noteworthy rise in businesses relocating to larger premises, up from 9% to 14%. Recruiting new staff also increased, climbing from 16% to 20%.
In terms of funding, the proportion of businesses looking for financial backing through a partner or company rose from 9% last year to 15% currently. Meanwhile, 11% said they were re-evaluating their financial commitments — which is flat on a year ago (Does this mean the same as a year ago?).
The prospect of driving further growth through overseas expansion remained comparatively low at 11%. The figures were more robust in 2016 and 2017, where the rate hovered between 25% and 28%, suggesting that the repercussions of Brexit have had a disruptive impact on Scottish firms’ international aspirations.
Notably, the Scots respondents said that their continued adoption and usage of technology has further bolstered the business efforts, with 25% stating it has allowed them to be more competitive in pricing (up from 11% in 2021), cut overhead costs (28%), enhance time management (35%), and offer faster services (33%).
Speaking on these findings, Jo Morris, head of insight at Novuna Business Finance, said: “Our tracking research highlights the resilience and adaptability of Scottish small businesses, even in the face of economic challenges. These findings offer a clue about what might be an uplift in the overall proportion of businesses reporting growth during the autumn and winter months.”
Earlier this week, DIGIT covered a separate report from Grant Thornton UK LLP, the professional services network, which found that cost pressures — including rising interest rates and higher costs — are impacting mid-sized Scots businesses to a slightly lesser extent than seen on a UK-wide level.
For instance, the firm’s research found that 35% of Scots mid-market firms have frozen salary increases, a further 43% are planning to do so, and over half (51%) have also frozen workforce bonuses.
However, 52% of UK mid-sized firms have frozen salary increases, and a further 36% are planning to do so, with almost half (48%) also having frozen workforce bonuses.
Devised by the UK Space Agency, Space for Everyone is a UK-wide tour designed to inspire the future space workforce, shining a light on the country’s burgeoning space sector and the variety of career opportunities within it.
After previously attending the Aberdeen event in August, Orbex will once again provide visitors with a glimpse into rocket building and spaceflight, offering a variety of activities, educational resources, and insights into the company’s own operations.
The tour will visit Glasgow’s George Square from the 21st of September through the 25th, with Orbex participating on the 21st and 22nd.
The Scots rocket company is set to take the opportunity to address the high level of interest in the rapidly emerging Scottish spaceflight industry, particularly among younger generations, offering freebies, activity books for kids, and informational resources about its Prime space rocket.
Prime itself is a 19-metre long rocket designed to launch small satellites into polar and sun-synchronous orbits, and has been engineered to leave zero debris on Earth and in orbit.
Space for Everyone attendees will also get to see videos showing the Orbex Prime space rocket, as well as the construction of the launch platform at the test site in Kinloss. The launch of Prime is expected to mark the first vertical rocket launch from the UK mainland.
“Our commitment to the community goes beyond just business. Engaging with young people who will make up the next generation of space industry professionals, is a privilege,” said Martin Coates, the CEO of Orbex.
“We’re looking forward to showcasing some of the fascinating work underway at Forres and Sutherland and provide a glimpse into Scotland’s pioneering role in the future of global spaceflight. At our last Space for Everyone event, we gave out 1,250 activity books to kids and adults. So, let’s see if we can beat that in Glasgow!”
Matt Archer, the director of launch at the UK Space Agency, also commented, saying: “We’re delighted to bring our Space for Everyone tour to Glasgow so young people and their families can learn not just about space, but also about the vibrant space sector and the exciting career opportunities available in the field.”
“The space sector is diverse and requires people from all backgrounds and with a variety of skills – many not traditionally associated with it. The tour proves you don’t have to be a rocket scientist, or even an astronaut, as there are a host of talents needed to bring space closer to our daily lives and improve our understanding of this critical part of the environment for the benefit of the planet and its people.”
The Space for Everyone tour — and Orbex’s appearance at its next stop — comes at a pivotal time: This time last week, DIGIT covered a report which found that the UK’s space industry is being “throttled” by the ongoing skills gap.
Specifically, the UK Space Agency- and Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology-commissioned report discovered that over half (52%) of organisations in the sector cited skills gaps in their workforce.
Difficulties in recruiting new staff (48%), new staff not yielding the necessary skills (45%), and existing staff leaving their roles (34%) have prompted the gaps, which have then led to issues such as an increased workload for the remaining workforce as well as delays in product development.
In particular, firms pointed to a need for more software and data skills (72%) to fill gaps, which is higher than other technical areas such as electronics design (43%) and systems engineering (39%).
On the report’s findings, professor Anu Ohja OBE, the director of championing space at the UK Space Agency, noted that: “We need differentiated programmes with focused interventions that engage with the widest possible audience, from young people of all ages, teachers, academics, and professionals at each career stage of the future and current space workforce.”
Ohja’s call for targeted interventions to inspire the future space workforce — which the Space for Everyone tour is helping to support — is a necessary step if the sector wants to continue its upward trajectory.
In terms of the sector’s success in generating income, the UK space industry’s income doubled during the last decade from £8.3 billion in 2009 to £17.5 billion in 2021. In Scotland, the ADS Group — the UK trade association for aerospace, security, defence, and space — found that the Scots aerospace and space sectors alone generated over £4b in turnover in 2022, and also employed around 13,000 people.
These findings derive from Grant Thornton UK LLP’s latest Business Outlook Tracker, which surveyed 605 mid-sized businesses across the UK, of which 51 were Scotland-based companies.
Specifically, the tracker found that 35% of Scots mid-market firms have frozen salary increases, with a further 43% planning to do so. Over half (51%) have also frozen workforce bonuses.
Scotland seems to be faring better when compared to the UK as a whole however, seeing as 52% of UK mid-sized firms have frozen salary increases, and a further 36% are planning to do so. Almost half (48%) have also frozen workforce bonuses.
Scots firms’ spending on people costs has been reined in across most areas, with 33% also reducing their headcount and 41% freezing recruitment.
This has also happened on a UK-wide level but to a higher degree, with 45% having reduced headcount and 46% having frozen hiring.
As well as tightening costs for people, many businesses in Scotland have made changes to their operations. Over three quarters (82%) have either already restructured their operations or have plans to do so.
Again, these numbers are slightly lower when compared to the 91% of mid-market firms across the UK that have done and said the same.
The research also showed that spending is being closely monitored within the market, with over a quarter (27%) of Scots businesses having reviewed their non-essential spending and a further 57% planning to do so, with the numbers on a UK-wide level varying at 47% and 42% respectively.
Across the UK, businesses are looking for solutions in a bid to improve performance amid a tightening of spending. Almost half (49%) of Scots firms have invested in productivity, efficiency, and automation, and a further 37% have plans to explore options in this area.
Over half of UK mid-sized firms have invested in performance-boosting opportunities, with a further 40% planning to do so, however.
Speaking on the latest Business Outlook Tracker findings, Stuart Preston, partner at Grant Thornton UK LLP in Scotland, said: “While inflation is, slowly, starting to fall, it’s clear that firms are remaining prudent and closely monitoring their spend across all areas from wages to recruitment and operations.
“Ensuring they keep a close eye on their financing position and rein in unnecessary spending where possible, will help many to remain in a robust position despite the cost pressures they may be facing.
“We have also seen an increase in optimism about business’ future revenue growth expectations, which suggests that many are confident that the actions they’re taking now, or have planned, are sufficient to work through this period. Particularly as we have seen slight real wage growth for the first time in over a year which, when combined with the fall in energy costs and usage over the summer, means that consumers will have more disposable income to spend.”
As businesses continue to work through cost pressures, the tracker found that over three quarters (82%) of the Scots firms surveyed anticipate that they will need to raise additional funds over the next year, though this compared to 74% of firms on a UK-wide level.
Interestingly, instruments such as Sustainability Linked Loans (SLL), which offer more favourable terms tied to performance against agreed ESG goals, are increasingly popular with the Scottish mid-market. 71% of respondents already have an SLL in place, and 78% said they will consider one at their next debt raise or re-finance.
The report — which is underpinned by a survey of 255 decision-makers involved with digital transformation efforts — highlighted the pervasiveness of the country’s tech skills gap, with only one in 10 firms claiming not to be suffering from a lack of skilled IT professionals in any way.
It uncovered that the biggest gap is in the field of software development (37%), with large companies boasting over 500 employees experiencing this more acutely (48%). Following software development, the next most in demand roles are in cybersecurity (37%) and digital marketing (36%).
Worryingly, respondents pointed to the fact that the situation is getting tougher as time goes on. Over half (57%) of respondents said that their tech talent shortages have either substantially or somewhat increased compared to last year, rising to 74% for the firms experiencing large or very large shortages.
The reasons for their internal shortages, firms believe, include not being able to find qualified candidates (34%), as well a lack of budget (32%).
The report also spotlighted the domino effect that the shortages are having on organisations’ digital transformation efforts. For instance, for the firms that admitted they weren’t making decent progress on their digital transformation journeys, the main reason cited was that it’s taking longer than expected (45%), with a further 30% citing there’s too much work to be done and too few people. Specifically, 22% noted they don’t have the right talent in place.
Further, there’s a consequent negative impact on teams’ mental health. While 92% of people reported feelings of work-related stress, nearly two-thirds (62%) cite tech talent shortages as the cause, with more than half (52%) of those respondents experiencing an increased workload. People working in senior management roles were the most likely to lay the blame on the tech talent shortages, with 80% saying so.
In light of these findings regarding talent shortages, mental health challenges, and paused digital transformation efforts, Gigged.AI’s report advocates for organisations to “think about more flexible ways to tackle these challenges.”
Positively, the research found that firms are already starting to do so, with over a quarter (27%) of firms creating training programmes to upskill current employees to plug skills gaps, and 69% offering mental health support to their staff, for example.
Also in the report, Mark Logan, the chief entrepreneurial advisor to the Scottish Government, recommended that the UK tech industry take a systemic approach to creating and supplying the needed talent: “The size, strength and resilience of the tech sector is largely a function of the talent available.
“The UK needs to adopt a more systematic approach to supplying that talent, with a joined-up policy across schools, universities and colleges, retraining support to convert from other disciplines, immigration and a lifelong learning programme. Without that we are choosing to limit our economic strength well into the future.”
The full report, titled Digital Transformation in Crisis: The Impact of Skill Shortages, Talent Trends and Burnout on the UK’s Technology Industry, can be read here.
From a zero-day vulnerability discovered in Google Chrome to a zero-click flaw enabling the installation of spyware on iOS devices, self-professed “creaky old hacker” Daniel Cuthbert is undoubtedly right: It’s been “really bad” regarding bugs in vendor products within recent weeks.
“The problem is, bugs like these are being leveraged by a big, global complex to access data — and it has meant that technology has now allowed us to spy on anybody,” he explained during his Scot-Secure West keynote at Strathclyde University’s Technology and Innovation Centre on 14 September.
On matters of bugs, exploitations, and cybersecurity, Cuthbert is a thoroughly authoritative figure: He serves as Santander’s Global Head of Cybersecurity Research, and sits on multiple UK Government cyber advisory boards. And if his name looks familiar, that might be due to headlines in the press: In 2005, at age 28, he was convicted of breaking Section 1 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
Witnessing first-hand how, since the 1990s, the exploitation of bugs has undergone a metamorphosis into something undeniably sinister on myriad fronts — and providing insight into that evolution — was the focal point of Cuthbert’s engaging yet sobering keynote.
For those who didn’t get the chance to hear him speak in person, here’s a rundown of Cuthbert’s talk. It makes for rather apt reading, considering we’re living through “a golden age of espionage in terms of stealing information” — a phrase Cuthbert referenced that was formulated by Kenneth Geers, an ex-intelligence expert and personal friend of his.
Hello, World
Cuthbert’s own interest in bugs began during the early days of the Internet. He started hacking around 1994, and without any followable how-to guides or explainers. “We learned, we built exploits using Perl, we shared those exploits with friends, and we broke into stuff,” he explained.
While both individuals and the motley crew hacking groups that formed “were scanning and finding stuff,” it was also the case that “people weren’t really using the Internet,” meaning that it was something of a niche technological sport — and while some damage was possible, it wasn’t close to the scale of havoc seen today.
As the 1990s progressed, the scene experienced some ramping up, as did the accessibility of bug exploitation. As Cuthbert noted, ~el8 — the anti-security hacktivist collective — had “called out the fact that Bugtraq, an early mailing list, was facilitating an industry and a consortium of ‘script kiddies.’ Now, the term ‘script kiddies’ came about from around that time, where we saw people taking proof of concept exploit code that was shared on Bugtraq, and just using it willy-nilly to do stuff on the Internet.”
Cuthbert acknowledged this observation was true: “They were right — what we were doing was arming a bunch of people that were doing damage.” Though, Cuthbert mentioned that it still, in the grand scheme of things, “never really kicked off, because it was the early days.”
For Cuthbert, the turning point came with the new millennium, and with a vulnerability logged in the recently-created Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures database as CVE-2002-0392.
He relayed that “2002 was an interesting time — CVEs were just out — and this was the Apache scalp vulnerability, the exploit that I wrote. What was interesting about this was the threat intelligence experts at the time deemed that the vulnerability was not exploitable.”
This then “caused a massive stir with three amazing friends who are called GOBBLES. GOBBLES had enough and they said, ‘Do you know what? Screw you all, we’re going to write a multi-staged, multi-payload exploit’ that effectively wreaked a lot of havoc on the Internet at the time, because there was no patch from Apache.”
It was this that “started to set the scenes as to the way the world of the sinister bug was changing,” noted Cuthbert.
The War on Bugs
On New Year’s Eve 2004, just days after the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami disaster, Cuthbert donated to a website that was collecting money to support those affected. However, after making the payment and not being directed to a confirmation or thank-you page, he grew suspicious; could he have been duped by a phishing site?
In response, he decided to investigate the site’s security — which involved hacking it — and activated an alert for the website’s intruder detection system. This consequently led to his arrest and eventual conviction, in which he was charged £400 for the “offence” and £600 in further costs.
Off the back of his arrest and conviction, Cuthbert moved to Bangkok, Thailand, following in the footsteps of many other hackers at the time. Most notably, he lived with a South African hacker known as “the Grucq” — and it was the way in which the Grucq was working with both hackers and governments that was especially interesting, if not pivotal.
“Everyone knew the Grucq, and the Grucq knew all the exploit writers who now saw that giving away exploits for free was a really stupid business idea, because at the time you could get £200-250K and more, no questions asked, for certain zero-days,” Cuthbert explained.
“So, the Grucq acted as the middleman to move money around from governments who were buying exploits but didn’t want to gain access to the people that were selling the exploits, because it was a weird anomaly.”
After some media attention, the practice — the Grucq wasn’t alone in doing it — was pushed further underground. Then, as Cuthbert stated, “what happened after that was a really, really ugly stage: We started to see a big rise in the global surveillance industry.”
Technological Omnipresence
“Surveillance and interception is nothing new,” Cuthbert made clear. “Julius Caesar put together a great group of people to do surveillance.”
Over the centuries, the methodologies have adapted both to and alongside technological innovation: “If you look at the history of surveillance, it’s moved from the interception of letters, messages, and so on, to the interception of telephone calls, then we started to move into computers, and then into the mobile world — and now we have geolocation.”
“This industry thrives on bugs; it needs bugs and these vulnerabilities in the products that we all use,” he said. The bugs are then “being leveraged by a big, global complex to access data — and it has meant that technology has now allowed us to spy on anybody.”
To elucidate, Cuthbert posed a rhetorical question to the audience: “How many of you are aware that the ad tracking network is far more pervasive and powerful than any of my friends at the NSA, CIA, or GCHQ? It’s a phenomenally powerful industry that exploits bugs and keeps track of you. In fact, now, if I want to learn anything about you, I go to a data broker, and I buy data from your mobile phone, and I buy data from the apps that are exploiting bugs and how mobile operating systems work.”
This is but part of the infrastructure making up our contemporary digital panopticon. As Cuthbert explained: “In the late 1700s, Jeremy Bentham came up with the panopticon. The panopticon is the ideal jail, where all the cells are open, you have a single place in the middle where a guardsperson can look at all the people, and there’s no such thing as privacy. The panopticon is where we’re at.”
To further highlight our digital panopticon’s ubiquity, Cuthbert touched on lawful intercept tools, which facilitate electronic surveillance by law enforcement agencies. “Four years ago, I started to look at how big the lawful intercept world was; this world that capitalises on bugs, bugs in vendor products, bugs in software — bugs in everything.”
After helping build out a tool called Maltego, Cuthbert used it to “map out the global surveillance network” — which he did. He subsequently found “a lot of companies, a lot of capabilities, a lot of countries, all selling some form of exploitation of a bug,” with around 120 companies specifically offering lawful intercept across the planet.
This indeed, and as referenced at the beginning of the captivating keynote, is a golden age of espionage in terms of stealing information.
“It’s hard to talk about the bug world without talking about the baddies in the room,” stated Cuthbert, despite just discussing lawful intercept and the ad tracking network — highlighting how nefarious the “baddies” are in actuality.
While many sinister incidents and anecdotes could’ve been referenced, he relayed one particular story at the intersection of Mexican politics, the sugar industry, and bugs.
In the mid-2010s, “Mexico realised that it had a real big problem with obesity, and that sugar was everywhere,” explained Cuthbert. “So they set together a task force to eradicate sugar from the Mexican diet. But there were certain people in the sugar industry who didn’t like that.”
In response, phishing messages and links were sent to government employees and campaigners at the forefront of advocating for Mexico’s soda tax, with the links containing invasive spyware originally developed by an infamous cyber arms dealer.
The phishing messages themselves concerned the hoaxed sudden deaths of the target’s family members, as well as marital affairs — ushering the targets to click the links out of fear and instinct. Ultimately, as Cuthbert noted, the adversaries “made use of the dealer’s capability to send exploits on to the people involved in changing the law.”
As a more recent example of exploitation for nefarious political reasons, Cuthbert referenced an FBI report relating to how “North Korea stole around 40 million from another Web3 wallet,” stipulating that “the entire complex of North Korea earning money with bugs is pretty phenomenal.”
These stories are just two instances of how we have “big players messing around with politics and bugs” — and are but two the general public are privy to; perhaps the very tip of the gargantuan, mostly submerged iceberg.
Secure by Design
As Cuthbert’s talk began winding down, he noted the onus on vendors shipping and selling products to ensure that their offerings are, in terms of security, watertight. After all, it’s the proliferation of bugs that are continually feeding this modern-day beast.
“If we start to look at how prolific bugs are in our industry, we start to look at things like CISA’s KEV, and CISA’s KEV for me is our mirror of the industry,” underscored Cuthbert. The U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Agency’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog is, as its name suggests, a directory of discovered bugs that’ve been exploited in the wild — but it also functions as a dishonourable list of vendors.
“What’s amazing is what Jen Easterly and the team are doing at CISA, saying, ‘Right, we need to get vendors to do more. We’re going to shame vendors and put their name on a government website to say your code, applications, and products are being exploited — fix it,’” he described.
However, in doing so, KEV has highlighted the sheer number of bugs that are being exploited and leveraged for dubious means. “I checked the other day and we’re about to hit 1,000 products listed in KEV. So, something’s not working, we’re finding more and more bugs every day, and more and more vendors are getting hit.”
As somebody who sits on UK Government advisory boards, Cuthbert mentioned his relief that Secure by Design — a piece of legislation requiring IoT product manufacturers to comply with new baseline security standards — is coming into effect here in spring 2024.
“I can’t believe I’m standing here as a hacker, as a miscreant, saying we do need some kind of regulation. The reality is we need the threat of regulation: We need people to know that you can no longer sell and ship products that are knowingly insecure. We wouldn’t expect it with a car, we wouldn’t expect it with the seat that you’re sitting on. Why do we willingly let vendors ship products that are woefully insecure, but charge a large amount of money? This is where Secure by Design comes in.”
Regulation — and/or the threat of it — is just one of the initiatives to help drive down the proliferation of bugs however, because it goes past governments and involves the global technology industry as a whole.
In light of this, Cuthbert advocated for the international tech industry, starting with the attendees at Scot-Secure West, to “be more aggressive and ask more questions of the people we’re buying kit from.”
“What we need to do now is we need to start going up to vendors and asking them, ‘What are you actually doing to make your product secure — not to make us secure — but make your product secure?,’” he suggested.
Cuthbert’s actionable advice here can be thought of as a form of community action, or a kind of collective bargaining; a united step towards driving down the very thing that has captured his curiosity and thoughts for nigh on decades: bug exploitation.
Perhaps, by doing so, we can help usher in a more beneficial golden age than the one we’re currently withstanding.
The AIA programme nurtures both local and global emerging companies using AI for wider societal benefit in core areas such as health and wellbeing, social care, and environmental sustainability.
The selected participants benefit from a package of support focused on building connections, as well as from leadership mentoring and support with product development.
The 2023/2024 cohort is composed of 13 companies, including Kenya-based AgriTech Analytics. The company, led by its CEO and co-founder Maryanne Gichanga, uses AI technology to tackle annual crop losses in Africa caused by pests, diseases, and climate change.
The cohort also includes Looper and Bennu.ai, the two companies named by DIGIT last month as examples of Edinburgh’s most interesting tech startups. Looper is life cycle assessment software helping companies to measure and reduce the climate impact of their products. Bennu.ai, meanwhile, develops smart and automated waste solutions for businesses.
The full, 13-strong cohort is as follows:
AgriTech Analytics
Black Goblin
FCLabs
My SMASH Media
Bennu.ai
Looper
Open Power
Soil Benchmark
Allos
Dyneval
Eye to the Future Ltd
Happitech
SympaHealth
AIA is delivered by the University of Edinburgh’s Bayes Centre on behalf of the Data-Driven Innovation hubs. Support is also provided by Edinburgh Innovations, the university’s commercialisation service.
“We warmly congratulate the 13 companies which have been selected for this year’s AI Accelerator programme through a highly competitive process,” said professor Ruth King, the director of the Bayes Centre.
“The cohort includes a diverse group of companies that are using AI innovation to drive progress in addressing societal challenges in key areas including healthcare and climate change.
“This programme has a clear focus in helping AI-driven businesses further commercialise their proposition to make them world-leading companies.
“As we have seen from the progress of many of its former participants, the programme has a proud record in helping AI innovators scale up and attract investment to help maximise their full potential.”
John Brodie, who was appointed last year as the AI Accelerator programme’s entrepreneur in residence, said: “As an entrepreneur who is passionate about driving actionable data science projects and enabling early-stage businesses to scale, I am incredibly excited to be once again working with the companies involved in this year’s AI Accelerator.
“The engagement of world-leading, innovative businesses from Scotland, the UK and across the globe underline the impact of this highly-regarded programme in developing AI-for-good solutions.”
The announcement of the seventh AIA cohort comes just a week after Microplate Dx, a former AIA cohort company, announced that it had closed a £2.5m seed funding round to help it further develop its technology.
iwoca — the small business lender — analysed Companies House data to track the rates of business creation across the UK’s regions and local authorities, comparing data from H1 2023 with previously recorded figures.
In Glasgow, 22 businesses were created a day during the first half of this year, with registrations totalling 4,038. This equates to 636 new businesses being created per 100,000 people, and marks an increase of 8% over the first half of last year.
It also means that for the third year in a row, Glasgow saw the highest business creation per capita out of all local authorities in Scotland.
Edinburgh saw the second highest number of companies created, at 595 registrations per 100,000 people. Edinburgh is followed by Dundee at 424 per 100,000 people, and then Aberdeen at 383 per 100,000.
As was the case last year, Scotland experienced the lowest rate of new business creation per capita out of all British regions in H1 2023, with 365 per 100,000. However, this did represent an increase of 8% from 2022.
Across Britain as a whole, 99 new businesses were created every hour in H1 2023, with 436,000 new businesses being created. Compared to the same period in 2022, this is an increase of 9% – indicating the British business economy is somewhat re-emerging from financial uncertainty of recent years.
Of all British regions, London saw the highest rate of business creation in the first half of this year, with 1,768 new businesses being created per 100,000 people. The North West (612) and the West Midlands (574) rank second and third respectively.
iwoca’s findings have been compiled as the Business Hotspots 2023 list.
Seema Desai, iwoca’s chief operating officer, commented on the data, saying: “It is encouraging to see so many new businesses being created during the first half of this year, despite high inflation and economic uncertainty.
“iwoca’s Business Hotspots 2023 list shows that the spirit of entrepreneurship is strong across the whole country, with tens of thousands of businesses being created in each region. This will be vital for the country’s economic growth over the next few years, and is a huge vote of confidence in the UK as a place to do business.”
Nearly all (97%) of organisations in the UK space sector with skills gaps say there’s been knock-on impacts to their business performance and growth, with 71% describing those impacts as major or moderate.
These are just two of the insights gleaned from the Space Sector Skills Survey 2023, a new report commissioned by the UK Space Agency (UKSA) and the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT), to understand the prevalence — and the consequent challenges — of the industry’s ongoing skills gap.
The data underpinning the newly published report is derived from a 51-question survey and 21 structured interviews, conducted between April and June this year. Over 200 organisations — including companies, government bodies, universities, and third-sector groups — responded. The responses represent around 12% of space-oriented organisations within the UK, employing roughly 35% of the country’s space workforce.
The survey’s findings highlighted that the supply of skilled and experienced workers isn’t keeping pace with the rate at which the industry is growing, having doubled in income during the last decade from £8.3 billion in 2009 to £17.5 billion in 2021.
Specifically, over half (52%) of organisations situated in the UK space sector reported skills gaps in their current workforce. These gaps are a result of difficulties in hiring new staff (48%), new staff not yielding the necessary skills (45%), and existing staff leaving their roles (34%). The gaps have then led to an array of issues, such as an increased workload for the remaining workforce, and delays in product development.
In terms of where the gaps in skills actually lie for organisations, 72% have a gap in software and data skills, which is markedly higher than any other technical area, such as electronics design (43%) and systems engineering (39%). Half of organisations expect that their space skill needs will differ in three years’ time, with 81% of these respondents expecting they will need more software and data skills.
However, the current need and difficulties in hiring for software-, data-, and engineering-focused roles are reflected in job vacancy rates, with software, data, and systems engineering roles together making up nearly half (49%) of all vacancies. Senior roles are especially harder to recruit for, and also take longer to fill.
In terms of recruitment issues — and aside from applicants lacking the required specialist expertise and qualifications — competition for talent from companies both in (45%) and outwith (68%) the space sector was cited as a major cause of difficulties. Similarly, uncompetitive pay is another significant issue (39%).
In a bid to secure the skills they need, a number of organisations have looked outwardly — just over a third (36%) of companies have tried to hire from outside the UK, with more large- (58%) and medium-sized (56%) organisations doing so compared to small (38%) and micro (16%) ones. Of the companies that tried to recruit from other countries, 83% faced difficulties, including high costs and the complexity of the visa process. At 21%, just over one fifth were not successful in recruiting from abroad.
The report ultimately concluded that the core issues impacting the UK’s space sector have not changed, and that the scale and significance of them have increased. According to the report, many of the respondents identified a need for a skills gap-related plan from the UK Space Agency.
“The UK space sector is not achieving its potential. The sector’s ability to innovate, scale-up, and deliver next generation solutions to today’s problems is being throttled by access to the diverse skill sets it needs to face these challenges,” noted Doug Liddle, the chair of the Space Skills Advisory Panel and the vice chair of UKspace.
He also wrote that “Unlocking this growth in the UK space sector requires a skilled workforce fuelled by a pipeline of talent and world-leading training provision. Addressing skills gaps and recruitment challenges are therefore a key priority for both government and industry.”
Professor Anu Ohja OBE, the director of championing space at UKSA, corroborated: “We need differentiated programmes with focused interventions that engage with the widest possible audience, from young people of all ages, teachers, academics, and professionals at each career stage of the future and current space workforce.
“All of which must be developed in pro-active partnership with academia and the sector organisations for which, as the survey highlights, skills issues are major factors in determining future growth, prosperity, and impact.”
In response to the pervasive issue, Liddle reaffirmed a future cross-collaborative effort to alleviate the sector’s skill gap, stating: “A notable piece of feedback was a desire for more clarity from government on how it plans to address these challenges, so I am delighted that early next year the UK Space Agency, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and the Space Partnership will be jointly co-developing the Space Workforce Action Plan detailing the concrete next steps we will take in this area.”
SDS is carrying out this research in a bid to help companies in Scotland improve their recruitment practices so that they’re more inclusive of and for diverse teams.
According to the agency, the lack of diversity within digital workforces is thereby contributing to the ongoing digital skills gap. While this can hamper the growth of variously sized businesses across the economy, it’s perhaps most stark for small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
To gain further insight — and to better support businesses — SDS are calling on business owners and Human Resources (HR) departments to complete their new short survey, which can be found here. The closing date for submissions is 29 September.
SDS asserts that any information provided will be solely used for research purposes, and won’t be published.
Speaking on diversity, inclusion, and the pervasive skills gap, Phil Ford, head of digital economy and financial services at SDS, said: “The demand for digital skills has never been higher, and smaller companies have to compete with large corporations and multinational for that limited talent pool.
“We know that a focus on inclusion and diversity is crucial if firms want to attract, recruit and retain good people, and we want to help SMEs in particular with that effort.
“This survey will give us the essential data to make sure we create the right support and resources to improve inclusivity in the wider digital economy.”
Within recent years, companies across Scotland, the UK, and across the globe have been paying greater attention to diversity and inclusion efforts, with many of those efforts beginning with enhanced recruitment practices.
However, recent statistics show that much like many other industries and geographies, the Scottish tech sector itself still has a ways to go to resolve the key diversity and inclusion challenges within it.
For instance, when it comes to gender alone, women make up just 23% of those in digital technologies roles, according to ScotlandIS, the membership organisation for Scotland’s digital technology industry. In addition to gender, there are other and intersecting forms of diversity, including race, religion, sexual orientation, age, neurodiversity, and disability, among others.
According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development — the association for HR management professionals — the business benefits of instilling a diverse and inclusive workforce and place include increased innovation, creativity, productivity, reputation, and engagement.
Further, it can aid companies with better attracting and retaining a wider pool of talented candidates and employees — something which can particularly help alleviate the digital skills gap faced in Scotland and beyond.
The latest funding round into the scaleup — formerly known as R3-IoT — was led by existing investor Scottish National Investment Bank (SNIB). Scottish Enterprise, the University of Strathclyde, and AzurX, the Dubai-based space and tech investor, joined SNIB, with Scottish law firm Burness Paull advising on the investment.
The total amount raised by Krucial now stands at more than $7.5 million (£6m), with the new batch of financing set to be used to accelerate growth in the firm’s core markets, which include energy, aquaculture, agriculture, and rail, both in the UK and internationally.
Founded in 2018 by Allan Cannon and Kevin Quillien, Glasgow-based Krucial provides digital solutions that enable access to important data for industries with remote and hard-to-reach assets. The end-to-end digital infrastructure to connect operations from anywhere is facilitated through satellite and cellular technology combined with IoT devices and cloud services.
“This funding is a clear vote of confidence in Krucial’s cutting-edge solution – especially given wider macroeconomic conditions,” Cannon said. “The ambition, potential and performance of Krucial to this point has proven our value to investors, who are backing us to take the next steps towards digitising the planet.
“We know that tackling the most important issues of our time – from climate change to food security – requires innovative thinking and big ideas. This latest investment will unlock a host of new opportunities both in the UK and internationally in the $400bn enterprise IoT market. While we’re a Scottish-based company, we’re global in outlook, and are aware of just how excited international partners are by our solution.
“As we scale even further, our priority in the coming 12-18 months will be to accelerate growth by delivering on our ambitious business plan and continue providing solutions that are transforming enterprise performance and sustainability. The opportunity in front of us is significant, and we intend on taking full advantage of the trust shown in us by our investors to continue delivering digital transformation for partners and customers globally.”
Krucial is also a spinout from the University of Strathclyde. Meryl Levington, the director of innovation and industry engagement at Strathclyde commented on supporting the Scots firm, saying: “Strathclyde Inspire, the University’s flagship entrepreneurship programme, offers entrepreneurial training and opportunities to every student, staff member and alumnus.
“Krucial is a hugely exciting spin-in company from Strathclyde whose innovative, space-based technology-led solutions offer real value to a wide range of customers and huge global potential.
“The University is delighted to support the company’s growth and ambitions through our Strathclyde Inspire Investment Fund, and, through its links with our academic staff, to collaborate with the company on its research work.”
Today’s funding announcement follows a $3.8m (£3.1m) seed funding round which took place in H2 2021. The money has since helped Krucial to prepare for international expansion, ramping up its headcount across its engineering, technical, sales, and marketing departments.
Shortly after 2021’s batch of funding, the firm’s co-founders sat down with DIGIT to discuss the global connectivity challenge, why addressing this isn’t enough to close the digital divide across industry, and why satellite-enabled data intelligence services could be revolutionary.
Around a year later, in 2022, Krucial rebranded from R3-IoT. The company said that the change represented closer alignment to the company’s core offering — to provide access to crucial data intelligence in any location or situation and digitise where and when others cannot.
The centre will bring hundreds of academics from across the university’s four colleges together to undergo and unlock research on data science and artificial intelligence across various applications.
At the centre’s official launch event, a handful of projects utilising data science and AI to deliver new advances across six programmes of research were showcased.
The cross-disciplinary programmes target data- and AI-driven advances in engineering and the physical sciences; medical, veterinary and life sciences; economic and social sciences; arts and the humanities; and innovation. The sixth programme will support research in data science and AI across the university.
Related projects — including big data collection and analysis to improve quality of life in cities, and efforts to model and mitigate the effects of climate change, among other projects — involving University of Glasgow researchers are currently supported by more than £100 million in funding.
The launch event was attended by the likes of professor Mark Girolami, the chief scientist of the Alan Turing Institute — the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence — as well as Richard Lochhead MSP, the Scottish Government’s minister for small business, innovation, tourism, and trade.
Speaking on the launch and the centre’s mission-led ethos, professor Ana Basiri, who’s the centre’s director, said: “We were pleased to welcome Mr Lochhead to campus to learn about some of the work we’re doing to help tackle problems like climate change and inequality through data science and AI.”
“The University of Glasgow is a key player in this landscape, and our new Centre will bring together experts from across disciplines to work more strategically to tackle the grand challenges of our time,” said Basiri.
“In the years to come, we’ll be working to advance new research projects which help put data science at the heart of decisionmaking, to teach staff new skills to help them do their jobs more effectively, and to partner with industry to build new products and services using fresh insight gathered from their data streams.”
In April, the University of Glasgow joined the Turing University Network, a group of higher education institutions collaborating to use data science and AI for social good.
Professor Girolami, of the Alan Turing Institute, commented: “The data sciences and artificial intelligence technologies have enormous potential to contribute to solutions that tackle some of the global grand challenges we are currently facing.
“To deliver on this potential will require a coordinated, collective, sustained, and multi-disciplinary approach. The University of Glasgow’s new Centre for Data Science and AI is a beacon of research excellence and innovation in Scotland to facilitate and coordinate the essential collaboration between the University’s world leading experts in AI locally, nationally, and internationally.”
The innovation minister also commented, saying: “We are working to make Scotland a world leader in the development and use of artificial intelligence in a way which is trustworthy, ethical and inclusive. To do so we must rise to the challenges and opportunities, which will be felt across our economy and society.
“The University of Glasgow has long been renowned for its technical innovation and research, and I am confident that the new Centre for Data Science and AI will build on this reputation.
“I look forward to the Centre fostering collaboration and showcasing effective, impactful, and ethical data science and AI, in keeping with the vision of Scotland’s AI Strategy.”
The Scottish AI Strategy — which was outlined in 2019 by Kate Forbes MSP and then launched in March 2021 — was conceived to help realise Scotland’s vision to be a leader in the development and use of trustworthy, ethical, and inclusive artificial intelligence, with the Scottish AI Alliance being tasked with the delivery of the vision.
The report’s data comes after surveying around 70 Scottish recruitment and employment agencies helping to fill vacancies for companies in sectors such as IT and computing, engineering and construction, and more.
Specifically, the latest iteration of the monthly report uncovered that there was a renewed fall in permanent placements across Scotland in August, despite the brief rise in July.
Further, the rate of the contraction was the strongest since April, with surveyed recruiters linking the reduction to weaker economic conditions and a shortage of skilled and desirable candidates.
That said, there was also a downturn in permanent staff appointments at a UK level — and the decline was much quicker than that seen in Scotland.
The data from August also revealed a deterioration in permanent candidate availability in Scotland, continuing the current run of decrease that began in February 2021, with the rate of contraction picking up from July and being the highest seen in eight months.
The RBS report noted that increased hesitancy among people to move roles amid the current economic climate as well as skill shortages were linked to the latest reduction in permanent labour supply.
The downturn seen in Scotland is in direct contrast to the rapid increase in permanent candidate numbers at a UK level.
There was also a drop in the number of permanent vacancies in Scotland following a two-and-a-half-year period of expansion, though the report stipulated that the contraction was modest.
In the UK as a whole, growth of demand for permanent labour cooled, with vacancies rising just fractionally overall.
Amid Scottish firms’ bids to secure skilled and needed talent, salaries awarded to new permanent joiners continued to increase during August, extending the current sequence of pay growth that began in December 2020.
In particular, Scotland recorded a stronger rate of growth in permanent salaries compared to the UK-wide trend.
Speaking on these findings, Sebastian Burnside, the chief economist at Royal Bank of Scotland, said: “The latest survey data highlighted renewed weakness across the Scottish labour market.
“A smaller pool of desirable and skilled candidates and the muted economic climate meant that hiring activity remained subdued during August, with both permanent placements and temp billings falling sharply. Moreover, fewer work opportunities translated into a reduction in permanent vacancies.
“Nonetheless, both starting salaries and wages continued to rise at historically strong rates. Competition for scarce and skilled candidates often meant that firms had to pay more to secure the right talent.
“Going forward, with fewer vacancies in the market, and firms already limiting their hiring, the survey suggests a weaker outlook for the Scottish labour market in the remaining months of 2023.”
The most recent survey’s data — and what it potentially means for the rest of the year — comes amid the ongoing economic uncertainty faced by Scottish, UK, and global businesses alike.
However, DIGIT reported on the news last week that across the UK, techbusinessesare growing in confidence about their economic prospects, in spite of external pressure such as high inflation, rising interest rates, and a pressurised skills and hiring market.
Specifically, IT consultancy businesses — including software developers and consultants providing technical support — reported a marked improvement across most metrics, such as overall performance, whereas businesses in many other sectors like retail and hospitality are gloomier about their prospects.
Welcome to the latest edition of the DIGIT Deal Roundup.
From the Scottish Government relaunching and expanding its Ecosystem Fund to a University of Glasgow spin-out securing £36 million in funding, below includes some of August’s standout stories.
Without further preable, let’s get into it.
Funding and Investments
Scots Gov Announces Ecosystem Fund Expansion
A fund to help inspire more entrepreneurs to start or scale up their businesses has been relaunched, with grants of up to £50,000 available.
The Ecosystem Fund is also being widened this year to include initiatives encouraging young people to consider entrepreneurship from an early age.
Mark Logan, the chief entrepreneurial advisor to the Scottish Government, said: “Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem to raise a start-up. The Ecosystem Fund recognises and supports the vital enabling work of our ecosystem-building organisations. It will accelerate Scotland’s journey towards being an internationally recognised Startup Nation.”
Discover more about the fund expansion and relaunch here.
Chemify Wins £36M in Funding to “Digitise Chemistry”
University of Glasgow spin-out Chemify has secured £36 million from a number of investors.
Chemify’s £36m funding came in part as a Series A led by US-based Triatomic Capital, with participation from venture firms in Hong Kong and the US, and Scottish investment first Eos. More funding came through the UK Government’s Innovation Accelerator programme.
“Chemify is building a company that can design, make, and discover complex molecules on demand using digital blueprints faster, more efficiently, and safely than is currently possible,” said CEO Lee Cronin.
“Our mission is to deliver better molecules for pharmaceutical and industrial partners in a fraction of the time and cost currently required.”
Glasgow-based foodtech company Enough has raised £34 million (€40m) in new growth funding to expand their mycoprotein plant-based food production.
The company, founded in 2015, is a spin out from the University of Strathclyde graduates Jim Laird, Craig Johnston, and David Ritchie, and touts an environmentally-friendly meat-alternative.
The product uses Abunda, an ingredient created by feeding fungi sustainably-sourced sugars, which is then fermented in a way similar to beer.
Jim Laird, chief executive and founder of Enough, said: “With this new funding, we will accelerate that growth. The alternative protein market is a multi-billion dollar opportunity, and the ethical and environmental reasons to embrace non-animal protein sources are more pressing than ever.”
Edinburgh-based investment syndicate Archangels has secured a £12 million co-investment agreement with British Business Investments through its Regional Angels Programme.
The deal will supply Archangels — which invests in early-stage Scottish life sciences and technology companies — with additional funding to put towards the next generation of Scots entrepreneurs.
“This additional funding will allow us to support current and future portfolio companies to grow their businesses and provide returns for both our investors and the broader Scottish economy,” said David Ovens, joint managing director at Archangels.
“We are in advanced discussions with a number of exciting new companies, and we anticipate seeing these deals coming to fruition over the coming months.”
Cytomos, an Edinburgh-based life science company, has clinched £4 million to scale up market-testing of its technology platform Cytomos Dielectric Spectroscopy (CDS).
The investment round was led by existing investors Archangels with participation from Old College Capital, Scottish Enterprise and new investor British Business Bank.
Through its CDS platform, Cytomos aims to empower biopharma to bring novel therapies to market faster and reduce costs.
David Rigterink, CEO at Cytomos, said that the new funding will “now allow us to scale up our engagement with industry partners. We truly believe that, through our CDS technology, we offer a powerful platform which will help the scientific community bring novel therapies to market faster and radically reduce costs by making better informed, game-changing decisions a lot earlier.”
Integrated drug formulation and clinical trials company, BDD, has secured a further round of investment for £2M to aid the company’s expansion in response to growing demand for both its patented drug delivery technology and specialist clinical trial services.
The funding round was led by existing investors including angel syndicate Archangels, Scottish Enterprise, and new investor British Business Bank.
Dr Carol Thomson, CEO BDD Pharma, said: “We have always prided ourselves in working collaboratively with our clients to provide phase appropriate development, manufacturing and clinical testing services. This investment allows us to further expand on these services, enabling our clients to fast-track their drug product development.”
Scots Unis Win Share of Decarbonisation Funding
The University of Strathclyde and Heriot-Watt Univeristy are set to receive funding for the next wave of research aimed at accelerating UK decarbonisation efforts, as supported by the Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre (IDRIC).
Backed by the UKRI’s Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge, IDRIC are providing the money as part of its rolling “Flexible Funding Programme,” funding 13 new research projects to the tune of £1.2m in total.
Bryony Livesey, director of the Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge at UKRI, said: “The new round of funding by IDRIC aligns with the UK Government’s commitment to support and drive Net Zero goals. The quality of projects is a testament to IDRIC’s ability to collaborate with high-quality researchers to find meaningful solutions to decarbonising industries in the UK.”
Scientists at Scots Uni Secure £1M for Carbon Capture Tech
A team of scientists at the University of Edinburgh, in partnership with Carbfix – an Icelandic mineralisation operator – and the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre (SUERC), have earned £1 million to support their work.
Their collaborative project, called Inclusion, received funding from the Natural Environment Research Council’s “Pushing the Frontiers” scheme for environmental science research.
The partnership will look to develop methods for measuring the capture of carbon dioxide (CO2) in volcanic rock.
Dr Stuart Gilfillan, reader in Geochemistry at the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh, said: “This project will combine the state-of-the-art scientific laboratory facilities available in Scotland with the world’s leading CO2 mineralisation project to provide essential understanding of how to safely lock away CO2 in underground basalts.”
Scots Gov Provides Funding for Digital Inclusion Projects
In an effort to enhance digital accessibility in mental health and housing services, the Scottish Government has announced funding through the Digital Inclusion Programme for thirteen pioneering projects.
The first phase of the program, with a budget of £600,000, is expected to directly benefit more than 1,500 people through digital accessibility.
“This programme will see models tested that will help so many people gain the skills they need to improve their own health and know how to access the support that is available to them,” said Michael Matheson, cabinet secretary for NHS recovery, health and social care.
Three Scots Projects Land Funding From UK Space Agency
Three Scottish projects have been awarded up to £55,000 in UK Space Agency funding for innovations and research into water management, carbon emissions, and climate change effects using satellite technology.
The projects are set to take advantage of Earth observation tools, satellite tracking, and data on population demographics, in a bid to benefit sectors ranging from agriculture and energy, to finance and insurance.
Minister of state at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, George Freeman MP, said: “By backing UK innovators to make the most of modern technology including satellite data, AI, and Earth observation, we are also supporting businesses up and down our country to grow our economy while driving forward our ambition to make the UK a major player in space.”
UK FinTech Growth Partners Unveils £1 Billion Growth Fund
London-based investment firm UK FinTech Growth Partners has unveiled a £1 billion growth fund to support the country’s burgeoning fintech sector.
The growth fund is backed by established financial institutions like Mastercard, Barclays, NatWest, the London Stock Exchange Group, and Peel Hunt. The goal of the £1bn fund will be to help fintech companies between their Series B and pre-IPO stage.
“Our aim is to not only provide the capital needed for founders to scale their businesses, but to also engage with stakeholders across the nation to support the wider ecosystem. In doing so, we believe we can ensure the UK remains a global leader in FinTech,” said Phil Vidler, managing partner and CEO of FinTech Alliance.
UKI2S Innovation Fund Surpasses £100M After New Backing
Investment into the UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund (UKI2S) has surpassed £100 million, following further support from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the Ministry of Defence (MOD).
The purpose of UKI2S is to build and grow early-stage technology companies stemming from the UK’s research base. It’s an evergreen fund managed by Future Planet Capital, an impact-led venture capital firm.
Speaking on the surpassing of the £100m figure, George Freeman, the science and innovation minister, said: “This funding, reaching over £100 million with today’s investment, has so far supported more than a thousand high-quality jobs across the UK and secured more than £700 million of further private investment, in turn levelling up our country and boosting our economy.”
Green AI Initiatives Win Share of £1M UK Gov Funding
Twelve green AI initiatives will receive a share of £1m to decarbonise and boost the generation of renewable energy, in an effort to reach the UK’s net zero goal by 2050.
The supported schemes included in the fund range from solar energy improvements which use AI to improve forecasting of when it will best produce energy for the grid, to the decarbonisation of dairy farming through the use of AI robots monitoring crop and soil health.
Minister for energy efficiency and green finance, Lord Callanan, said: “It’s projects like those announced today that will take us to the next step on our ambitious journey to becoming net zero, while boosting our energy security and creating a new wave of skilled jobs for the future.”
Intelligens Consulting Helps Attract Investment Through Digital Infrastructure Model
Through its Anchor Tenant model, Intelligens Consulting — the telecoms, smart city, and digital transformation management consultant — has helped local authorities to transform their digital infrastructure and attract hundreds of millions of pounds in private sector investment.
The Anchor Tenant model, developed in 2019 by Intelligens Consulting, creates an environment for businesses to thrive and grow while increasing fibre coverage, connectivity, and bandwidths for council sites and communities.
“Our approach has not only attracted substantial private investment but has also yielded impressive economic returns, with up to £2.5 billion generated for local economies.”
said Iqbal Singh Bedi, the founder and consulting director of Intelligens Consulting.
Aberdeen-based IT, cybersecurity and internet service provider, Converged Communication Solutions, has acquired Aberdeen Technical Services (ATS).
The merger has resulted in the creation of a separate company under the Converged group, Scot-Tech Fire and Security (STFS).
Following the decision of its managing director, Graham Porteous, to step back from the business, ATS chose to become part of STFS in a move that has seen all employees being transferred, and existing customer relationships and service levels being maintained.
Andy McKay, now general manager of STFS, said: “We’re delighted to have taken on ATS. Having worked with them as a client for over six years, we were familiar with their steadfast reputation for high tech security systems, established client base and 25-year history. This merger helps to give us the competitive edge, enabling us to deliver clients the full package of security both online and offline.”
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has provisionally cleared a £1.2bn deal between healthcare tech giants UnitedHealth and EMIS following an in-depth investigation.
The deal was originally investigated over concerns it would hurt market competition for the technology used by GPs and hospitals to store data.
Kirstin Baker, chair of the independent inquiry panel carrying out the investigation, said: “Digital technology and data analytics play an increasingly important role in supporting high quality healthcare in the NHS and so it’s important we investigate this deal thoroughly.
“We want to ensure the NHS continues to benefit from innovation and efficiencies brought about by technology services competing for its business. After carefully considering a broad range of evidence, we have provisionally found that this deal is not expected to harm competition or adversely affect patients.”
As part of its Entrepreneurial Impact Report 2023 — in addition to underscoring the evolution of the spinout ecosystem and the current challenges that it faces — Octopus Ventures has ranked universities based on a series of key factors.
These factors include the number of patents, spinouts created, disclosures, and the subsequent financial transactions associated with exits. The data that underpins the rankings was sourced from the Higher Education Statistics Agency.
The University of Dundee secured top place due to its “incredibly high” average exit value for its spinout companies, not least bolstered by Exscientia — the biotech company using AI to support drug discovery — which in 2021 floated on the US NASDAQ at a valuation of $2.9 billion (£2.2b), and raised $510m (around £406m) in its IPO alongside private placement. Dundee emerged as the leader after ranking fifth place in Octopus Ventures’ previous report from 2020.
Alongside Dundee, other universities from across Scotland ranked prominently, with Edinburgh Napier coming in at tenth place, after ranking 42nd place in the 2020 rankings. The University of Aberdeen came in 15th place (from 13th place in 2020), the University of Strathclyde 17th place (23rd place in 2020), the University of Glasgow 18th place (21st place in 2020), and the University of St Andrews 21st place.
The latest report also shows that 60% of the top ten ranked universities are outwith the Golden Triangle of London, Oxford, and Cambridge. Queen’s University Belfast ranked second, Cardiff University fourth, the University of Leeds eighth, and the University of Nottingham ninth, in addition to Dundee and Edinburgh Napier which came first and tenth respectively.
On this, Octopus Ventures state that it “highlights that the academic strengths needed for deep tech success stories are distributed across the UK,” and that it “shows the potential for deep tech innovation to form part of the broader levelling up agenda, by harnessing local pockets of excellence to help the whole of the UK flourish through high value job creation and economic growth.”
While excellence outside the Golden Triangle is cause for celebration — as is the growing number of spinout exits, and increases in research funding from both the private and public sector — there are also causes for concern. The report highlights a shortfall in talent and a lack of lab space and infrastructure across the UK as some of the various pressing issues universities and spinouts face.
To ensure the continued success of the UK spinout ecosystem, Octopus Ventures suggests that what’s needed “is a continuous and best-in-class support structure. That includes a consistent government strategy, fair regulatory environments, sufficient research and translational funding, support for technology transfer offices, and a willing investor base.”
The call comes ahead of tomorrow’s 2023/24 Programme for Government announcement, detailing how Scots Gov aims to “deliver a wellbeing economy that boosts economic growth.”
CBI Scotland’s businesses have identified infrastructure decarbonisation, building new homes, improved broadband and transport connectivity, the labour market, productivity, and a competitive business environment as the key areas for economic performance gains in Scotland.
The group said that the devolved government must utilise Scotland’s energy strengths, as well as take account of UK Government incentives and regulations to drive energy efficiency improvements. This includes the development of a clean heat market mechanism, and the Great British Insulation Scheme, which aims to upgrade inefficient homes.
Regarding tax, CBI Scotland suggests that the Scottish Government should unlock trapped tax investment, including boosting exports and creating a long-term competitive tax strategy as to cut the costs of doing business and drive inward investment. This includes lowering business rates, thereby providing Scotland a level playing field with England on the large business supplement.
CBI Scotland would also like to see gigabit-capable digital connectivity rolled out by the end of the next parliamentary term, a national target to build 25,000 homes each year, and transport infrastructure investments that improve connectivity to key markets.
Speaking on this “whole system” approach, Tracy Black, CBI Scotland’s director, said: “The Scottish Government needs to start delivering now to achieve net zero by 2045.
“A long-term tax strategy would create certainty and simplicity. It would boost international competitiveness, make it more attractive to investors and enhance Scotland’s reputation as a place to do business.
“Scotland can steal a march on its rivals by speeding up the consenting process to cut down on the 12 years it takes to build an offshore wind power project in the UK. Business rates should incentivise investment to decarbonise older buildings, with rates relief giving tax breaks to firms that improve energy efficiency.
“Firms know long-term sustainable growth will help support life opportunities, fund public services and deliver on shared policy priorities. They are ready to work with government to make sure Scotland marches ahead of its international rivals.
“The First Minister’s ‘New Deal for Business’ must be the starting point of an effective partnership between government and business to create a clear, stable policy environment to grow the Scottish economy for the benefit of all.”
In April, First Minister Humza Yousaf initially announced the “New Deal for Business,” conceived in a bid to “help business and trade to thrive and maximise the opportunity of the green economy.”
To help support the New Deal, the New Deal for Businesses Group has been created to “provide a forum for government and business leaders to explore how best to support businesses and communities and to actively work together to achieve common goals, aligning Scottish Government policy with business.”
However, just months after the New Deal’s initial announcement, the most recent Scottish Business Monitor report from the Fraser of Allander Institute found that the majority of Scots businesses don’t believe that the government is in touch with business.
Professor Mairi Spowage, the director of the Fraser of Allander Institute, noted that the results “underline the importance of the Scottish Government resetting their relationship with business.”
The launch follows the publication of the Scottish Government-commissioned Pathways: A New Approach to Women in Entrepreneurship report in February, which was undertaken to help transform gender equality in entrepreneurship.
Stewart, the report’s chair and co-author, explained: “Pathways Forward is the culmination of the ongoing and widespread engagement and genuine appetite from across the ecosystem to see transformational change in Scotland’s entrepreneurial landscape.
“It has been exciting to see such momentum, facilitating collaboration, and joining the dots to ensure the recommendations outlined in the report are driven forward.
“Alongside the panel events we have been running this year, we will be implementing a number of other initiatives aimed at creating a forum for like-minded ecosystem stakeholders.
“This will include a member’s charter, where organisations can align themselves with our ethos and ambitions. Collectively, we now need to create the right environment to enable all stakeholders to embrace the opportunities, stand up and be counted to drive change.”
In June, the Scottish Government pledged £17.5 million toward Scotland’s startup economy, including to support one of the Stewart Report’s main recommendations: creating mobile pop-ups around Scotland to develop a network of ‘pre-start’ centres, making it easier for women to access entrepreneurial pathways.
Stewart added: “Cabinet Secretary Neil Gray and the Scottish Government have made clear they are committed, and we look forward to them continuing to support recommendations that can move the dial on both societal and economic terms.
“With the pre-start centres, the focus is now on powering up around the country, and connecting with all the great organisations that are already out there nationwide.”
Mark Logan, the chief entrepreneurial advisor to the Scottish Government, and co-author of the Pathways report, commented: “The Pathways report calls for nothing less than a transformation in how we think about and address the gender imbalance within entrepreneurship.
“This will only happen if the report’s recommendations are owned and taken forward by the whole entrepreneurial community.
“Pathways Forward is both the rallying point for that shared ownership, and the clarion call for real and sustained progress.”
Hazel Jane has recently been appointed as the project lead for Pathways Forward. Jane was formerly an entrepreneurship engagement manager with Tech Nation, and brings further experience from roles with Amiqus, FutureX, Turing Fest, and Krucial.
According to DASA — the Ministry of Defence’s body for finding and funding technology for the military, police, and security services — the aim of the exploration is to help the Home Office “have a better understanding of current technologies that could enhance facial recognition capabilities.”
It also seeks to identify “solutions” with higher readiness levels that could be deployed for Home Office and policing usage within the next 18 months.
Adopted “solutions” could expand retroactive facial recognition, which is when technology is used after an event to help establish who somebody is or whether their image matches against other media held in a database, as well as live facial recognition, where images of people in a specific area are streamed in real-time to a facial recognition system via cameras.
The Home Office and DASA stated that “the use of this technology in an ethical and effective way is a priority,” and that it is “vital that proposed solutions are secure, accurate, explainable and free from bias.”
Commenting on the market exploration, professor Paul Taylor, the National Policing Chief Scientific Adviser, said: “The Minister of State for Crime, Policing and Fire and I strongly support the development and implementation of facial recognition (FR) technology within the law enforcement sector and are encouraged by it’s [sic] potential.
“We firmly believe that embracing this advanced technology can significantly enhance public safety while respecting individual rights and privacy. Industry is pivotal to realisation of that mission.”
“To maximise the technological benefits and minimise the risks associated with FR, it is crucial that we support and encourage industry to continue developing capabilities which can be deployed effectively and ethically,” he further stated.
An Orwellian mass surveillance tool?
Facial recognition technologies are already being used in a number of ways within the UK policing and security settings, and at varying stages — despite ongoing public backlash and concern.
Silkie Carlo, the Director of Big Brother Watch — the British civil liberties and privacy campaigning group — said in a statement regarding the new market exploration that facial recognition technology is an “Orwellian mass surveillance tool.”
“It’s disturbing and deeply undemocratic that the Government is planning to expand facial recognition surveillance in the UK. This is an Orwellian mass surveillance tool rarely seen outside of Russia and China and has absolutely no place in Britain,” said Carlo.
“The Government has no mandate at all to do this and the fact that the rest of the democratic world is legislating to ban live facial recognition surveillance shows just how backwards the Home Office’s approach to this is.
“Live facial recognition has the potential to invade the privacy of millions of Brits and turn us into walking ID cards living in a surveillance state. It is totally unnecessary, unConservative and unBritish, and the Policing Minister would do best to focus on fixing our broken law enforcement rather than spending taxpayers’ money on dystopian, experimental software.”
Speaking previously on facial recognition technology, Liberty — the human rights and civil liberties advocacy group — said that “We should all be able to live our lives without the threat of being watched, tracked and monitored by the police. Facial recognition technology is a discriminatory and oppressive surveillance tool that completely undermines this basic right.”
In 2020, Liberty won a legal challenge against police use of facial recognition tech, with trial deployments of the tech by South Wales Police being ruled unlawful by the Court of Appeal.
The service, which was built on extensive development carried out by Microsoft Research and released under an open-source licence, will provide a replacement for the Microsoft service which will no longer be available beyond August 2023.
The Soundscape service itself comes in the form of a spatial audio mobile app for the iPhone. It augments the information typically provided by navigation apps, providing far greater contextual awareness by transforming ordinary sound into a three-dimensional experience.
Its features include the ability to preview routes in advance of a physical visit, save markers, and do more than just navigate to a single destination, allowing the user flexibility.
The Scottish Tech Army is committing to the ongoing maintenance and improvement of the app using its network of independent tech volunteers, combined with the contributions of its ‘Tech for Good Alliance’ member companies in the form of skilled volunteering by their staff.
The first release of Soundscape is a reproduction of the original app, providing the functionality that users have come to rely on.
To further enhance Soundscape with bettered functionality and improvements, the Scottish Tech Army will work with those in the visual impairment community, including the charities Guide Dogs and Seescape, as well as other visual impairment charities in the UK.
Financial support for the launch and initial operation of the Soundscape service was secured through a grant from the Thomas Pocklington Trust — a national charity whose mission is to enable and empower blind and partially sighted people of all ages to live the life they want to lead.
“We are very excited to be launching our Soundscape service, offering a way forward for the tens of thousands of existing users of the previous version of the app worldwide and making it available to many more users in the UK and around the world,” said Alistair Forbes, the CEO of the Scottish Tech Army.
“Our engagement with the visual impairment support community has shown how valuable users have found Soundscape and the concern that existed about the loss of the service.
“Building on the substantial initial investment made by Microsoft, we are drawing on the skills and commitment of member companies in the Tech for Good Alliance and our individual volunteers to both sustain and develop this highly valued service.”
The charity Guide Dogs was involved in the original research work done by Microsoft, and has used Soundscape in its work with a large number of people who are blind or visually impaired.
“Since its public release in spring 2018, Guide Dogs has integrated Soundscape into our service delivery, directly observing how it can support and enhance the independent mobility of individuals with vision impairments,” commented Tommy Dean, the operations technology development lead at Guide Dogs.
“Collaborating with the Scottish Tech Army, we’re actively advancing this innovative app, elated not only by its sustained future but also by its ongoing evolution.
“This fusion of innovation and accessibility underscores Guide Dogs commitment to empower users to live the life they choose. Together with other sight loss charities, we’re dedicated to fostering adoption and shaping the app’s future.”
Further delay with targeted AI legislation “would risk the UK, despite the Government’s good intentions, falling behind other jurisdictions” such as the United States and the European Union, with both already moving ahead with legislation amid the technology’s rapid development.
Among the twelve governance challenges highlighted by the Committee through its new report, the most notable relates to the potential existential threat that AI could pose. The Committee advocated that, if there is the possibility that AI is a major threat to human life, then governance needs to provide protections for national security.
In terms of society and culture, AI’s consequent disruption to jobs and the labour market, its introduction and perpetuation of biases, and how the content that AI generates intersects with intellectual property, privacy, misrepresentation, and liability were also underscored as governance challenges to be addressed swiftly.
Further, and on the more technical side, AI’s need for very large data sets, the need for significant compute power, certain models and tools not always being able to explain why it’s produced a particular result, as well as code openness were listed as key issues for policymakers.
Another is the challenge of international coordination when it comes to AI regulation. “AI is a global technology, and the development of governance frameworks to regulate its uses must be an international undertaking,” the Committee wrote.
In a bid to progress such efforts, the UK is hosting a global summit on AI safety at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire on the 1st and 2nd of November.
The two-day event is set to bring together governments from across the world — in addition to AI companies and researchers — to discuss the safe development and use of AI, and how risks can be mitigated through coordinated international action.
While the upcoming summit is embraced by the Committee, it also wants legislation to be made quickly and practically.
The chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, Rt Hon Greg Clark MP, said: “The UK’s depth of technical expertise and reputation for trustworthy regulation stand us in good stead and our Committee strongly welcomes the AI Safety Summit taking place at Bletchley Park in November.
“However, if the Government’s ambitions are to be realised and its approach is to go beyond talks, it may well need to move with greater urgency in enacting the legislative powers it says will be needed.”
While policymakers will need to ensure there’s appropriate governance in place for AI to be developed and used safely, it’s also a balancing act to make sure that AI innovation and the harnessing of it isn’t inadvertently quashed.
On this, Sridhar Iyengar, the managing director for Zoho Europe, commented: “Taking a global lead in the AI race is a vital part of the UK’s aim to become a Tech Superpower and November’s AI summit will play a key part in this.”
“AI can add significant value for businesses. For example, it can help increase efficiency and accuracy in projections forecasting, fraud detection and sentiment analysis. However, collaboration between business, government and industry experts is necessary to ensure its success.
“This can help to strike the right balance when introducing safe regulations and guidance for the development of truly innovative AI solutions that can play a central role in business growth.”
The findings come from TIGA, the trade association representing the UK video games industry, and its Making Games in the UK 2023 report, based on an extensive survey of UK games businesses.
Specifically, the number of discrete, active, verified Scottish games development companies increased from 147 to 162, representing a change of 10.2%. This is compared to an 11.9% increase for the whole UK industry over the same period.
Regarding staff numbers, Scotland has 2,338 permanent and full-time equivalent creative staff working on games development. This is up from 2,269 in December 2021. Across the UK, the number of full-time (and equivalent) staff is 24,155.
Scotland is currently the fifth largest games cluster in the UK in terms of headcount after London, the South East, the North West and the West Midlands. It’s also home to 7.7% of the UK’s total games companies, and 9.8% of its developer headcount.
Scottish games development companies are estimated to annually invest £161 million in salaries and overheads, contribute £133 million in direct and indirect tax revenues to HM Treasury, and make a direct and indirect contribution of £357 million to the UK’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Speaking on Scotland’s position in the game industry, Dr Richard Wilson OBE, the CEO at TIGA, said: “Scotland is one of the world’s most important games development clusters.
“It’s home to world leading and successful studios, including Rockstar, as well as over 2,300 creative staff in 162 studios. It has a number of excellent universities, whose courses includes TIGA Accredited degrees from Abertay University and the University of the West of Scotland. It has one of the best funding environments supported by Scottish Enterprise and Dundee’s UK Games Fund.
“Dundee is also a centre of excellence for collaboration between academia and industry, in particular the outstanding R&D work carried out by InGAME, which is led by Abertay University, in partnership with the University of Dundee and the University of St Andrews.”
Professor Gregor White, Dean of the School of Design and Informatics at Abertay University added: “The continued growth of the games sector in Scotland, and across the UK more widely, once again demonstrates how integral this fast-moving and ever-evolving industry has become to the digital economy, but also the need for continued R&D and innovation support at both Scottish and UK Government level, in order to keep pace with overseas competitors.
“The success of InGAME, which has catalysed an estimated £84.7m GVA for the UK economy, is an excellent example of what can be achieved through a shared games cluster ecosystem designed to bring industry and academia together.”
NATS provides air traffic control services and solutions to some of the UK’s largest airports, and also manages UK upper airspace.
In a statement from Martin Rolfe, the chief executive of NATS, it was revealed that initial investigations had shown that there was an issue with flight plan data which was received.
NATS’ primary and backup systems responded to the issue by suspending the automatic processing of flight data, so that incorrect safety-related information couldn’t be presented to an air traffic controller, or impact the rest of the air traffic system.
However, due to Monday’s technical issue, air traffic flow restrictions were applied, thereby leading to flight delay and cancellations across the UK network — including inbound and outbound flights.
In his statement, Role wanted to reassure the public that “all of our systems have been running normally to support airline and airport operations as they recover from this incident.”
He also stated that NATS has “well established procedures, overseen by the CAA, to investigate incidents. We are already working closely with them to provide a preliminary report to the Secretary of State for Transport on Monday. The conclusions of this report will be made public.”
Rolfe specifically noted that “There are no indications that this was a cyber-attack.”
While there’s never a good time for such a technological fault, the timing of Monday’s issue was particularly inopportune, considering the Summer Bank Holiday across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and the winding down of the Edinburgh Fringe festival in Scotland.
“While we resolved the problem quickly, I am very conscious that the knock-on effects at such a busy time of year are still being felt by many people travelling in and out of the UK,” Rolfe noted.
Ryanair’s CEO, Michael O’Leary, said that the airline had to cancel “about 250 flights” on Monday, affecting about “40,000 passengers” because of “long delays to flight plans,” and “crews running out of hours.”
On Tuesday, the following day, O’Leary said that it would look like Ryanair would “cancel about another 70 flights.”
According to the BBC, and concerning the UK’s six busiest airports, analysis of flight data websites has shown that at least 281 flights were cancelled on Tuesday.
This included 75 at Gatwick, 74 at Heathrow, 63 at Manchester, 28 at Stansted, 23 at Luton, and 18 at Edinburgh.
The most recent iteration of the long-running Scottish Business Monitor report, which is produced by the Fraser of Allander Institute in partnership with Addleshaw Goddard, surveyed over 400 firms from across the Scottish economy in the last two months.
Respondents were asked a series of newly-introduced questions regarding the Scottish Government, with these queries helping the government-business dynamic and its developments to be measured moving forward.
Specifically, the new set of questions helped to uncover that a mere 9% of Scottish companies feel that the Scottish Government understands the business landscape, compared to the 64% of businesses that currently disagree.
Larger firms were slightly more likely to disagree than smaller firms on this front: 86% of companies with over 100 employees disagree that the government understands business, while 73% of companies with fewer than 100 employees also disagree.
Furthermore, just 8% of businesses feel that the Scottish Government engages effectively with the sector they work in, with 67% of firms disagreeing.
Larger companies again had a higher rate of dissatisfaction, with 90% of firms with over 250 employees disagreeing that the government effectively engages with their sector, compared to the 72% of firms with between one and 10 employees who think the same.
Sector-wise, and at 80% and 92% respectively, Scots hospitality companies and “other services activities” businesses were the most likely to currently disagree that the Scottish Government understands the business environment.
Meanwhile, 92% of other services activities, 77% of construction, and 72% of retail companies disagree that the government engages effectively with their sector.
The research also showed that only 19% of respondents believe they know an effective route to influence Scottish Government policy, while 39% disagree.
Speaking on the findings, Professor Mairi Spowage, the director of the Fraser of Allander Institute, said: “These results are obviously pretty disappointing for the Government, with the vast majority of businesses not feeling that the government understands business or that they engage effectively.
“However, they underline the importance of the Scottish Government resetting their relationship with business.”
Spowage also noted that “These indicators can help us track progress over time – and hopefully see improvements in the relationship.”
David Anderson, the head of corporate at Addleshaw Goddard in Scotland, commented: “Developing the best environment to do business is essential for the economy to thrive so it’s important for policymakers to be aware of the sentiment among business leaders in this regard, the good and the not-so good.
“These results are very timely and speak to the frustrations that businesses are clearly feeling.”
The findings from the most recent Scottish Business Report further emphasise how a sizable portion of Scotland’s business community currently feel disillusioned and discouraged regarding Scottish Government action.
At an exclusive roundtable event held in June, key figures from the Scottish tech and business ecosystem as well as Viljar Lubi — the Estonian Ambassador to the UK — were brought together to discuss what can be learned from Estonia, which is something of a modern tech powerhouse.
The discussion inevitably touched on governmental action and support, and how Estonia’s governmental approach differs from Scotland’s. Peter Proud, the CEO and founder of Edinburgh-headquartered tech company Forrit, said that “There’s a real disconnect between government and business here in Scotland at the moment,” and “people like myself are drifting away […] because I don’t feel we’re being listened to.”
He relayed how he was recently “asked to sit on an economic development day — a workshop on startups,” and “was the only person that started a company there. Everyone else was from a government agency.”
Proud’s comments came just two months after First Minister Humza Yousaf announced the Scottish Government’s “New Deal for Business,” in a bid to “help business and trade to thrive and maximise the opportunity of the green economy,” according to the Scottish Government.
A New Deal for Businesses Group has been established as to “provide a forum for government and business leaders to explore how best to support businesses and communities and to actively work together to achieve common goals, aligning Scottish Government policy with business.”
Through Innovate UK’s Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) programme, the university received £130,000 to work with Moor Instruments Ltd to develop technology to assess blood flow in the microvasculature of organs during surgery.
Moor is a designer, manufacturer, and distributor of monitoring and imaging systems, based in Axminster, Devon. The firm also contributed a further £64,000 to the collaboration with Dundee.
Ensuring that blood flow can be accurately measured during surgery is a key step to reducing complication risk. Currently, fluorescent dyes are injected into patients to periodically enable perfusion imaging during surgery.
The Dundee-Moor project has seen the researchers develop technology that will assist with surgery without the need to inject dyes — and may also be used to assess perfusion of organs to help understand disease.
The device is set to initially be available for use in pre-clinical research, with it being anticipated that full development for use in clinical settings will follow.
The academic leads for the project are Dr Nikola Krstajic from Dundee’s School of Science and Engineering, and Dr Colin Murdoch from the School of Medicine.
Speaking on the collaboration, Dr Krstajic said that: “This has been a fantastic project to work on. Moor Instruments provided us with the essential background and pathway to pursue our objectives as engineers.
“As a company, Moor is able to highlight exactly what the medical industry requires and that knowledge empowers us to develop solutions that can ultimately benefit patients.
“Our Biomedical Engineering students also benefit from exposure and work experience in research and development within a top UK clinical and pre-clinical device design company.”
The North of Scotland KTP Centre, which helps to facilitate KTP collaborations between academia and industry, selected the Dundee-Moor project as a case study, demonstrating the benefits that these types of projects can bring to both academia and business.
Emma Craig of the North of Scotland KTP Centre commented: “This is the first University of Dundee KTP to have completed a full project lifecycle since they joined the North of Scotland KTP Centre in early 2019 and the whole team have been a pleasure to work with.
“We are delighted that the partnership has developed their new device and wish them every success with the ongoing testing and commercialisation.”
Rodney Gush, senior applications scientist at Moor also commented, saying: “It has been a real pleasure to work with Innovate UK, the North of Scotland KTP Centre and Dr Nik Krstajic and Dr Colin Murdoch at the University of Dundee, and many of their colleagues for additional ideas and support.”
The device and the collaboration which has underpinned it is the latest medtech-related news to come from the University of Dundee.
Relatedly, last year, DIGIT reported on the university’s new Centre for Medical Education and Technology — co-developed by the School of Science and Engineering and the School of Medicine — to help facilitate original research and prepare its graduates for high-skilled jobs within medtech.
The University of Dundee is also home to the Tayside Innovation MedTech Ecosystem (TIME), a Tay Cities Deal-funded centre engaging the NHS, academia, and commercial partners to develop innovative medical technologies as well as new companies.
The professional services firm’s new Mid-Market Private Equity Report highlights that, in Scotland, 21 deals worth £2.26 billion were completed during the first six months of this year, signifying a 25% drop in volume compared to the same period in ‘22.
Across the whole of the UK, mid-market private equity deals accounted for nearly half of all PE activity in H1 ‘23, with investments into the business services as well as technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT) sectors continuing to drive deal volume.
The TMT sectors represent 16.8% of all mid-market PE deals in the UK, despite TMT deal volumes falling 32% in H1 ‘23 compared to H1 ‘22.
Regarding the UK private equity market as a whole, mid-market included, 689 deals worth £70 billion were completed in H1 of ‘23, representing an around 24% drop in deal volume and a 22% decline in deal value.
Speaking on the underlying causes for the comparative drop — and commenting on how figures now relate to pre-COVID numbers — Graeme Williams, head of corporate finance M&A for Scotland at KPMG UK, said: “As we stepped into 2023, many were hopeful that the market would stabilise.
“However, it quickly became clear that rising prices for goods and services, along with higher interest rates, and uncertainty about world events, continued to erode confidence and impact deal volumes.
“These challenges also impacted the debt markets and we saw a significant increase in the price of debt, a much more cautious approach from credit committees to new deals and reduced leverage multiples.
“Overall, the private investment market had about 25% fewer deals. However, the level of activity seen in the first half of 2023 is still on par with pre-pandemic levels. Deals are still being made, but they are taking longer, unless they involve really good assets.”
Williams also mentioned there are reasons to feel positive about the UK’s M&A market, despite the aforementioned drop in deal volumes.
In particular, he noted: “While the number of private equity exits has remained low in the first half of the year, there’s growing pressure in this area. It’s only a matter of time until there’s an increase in exits. Additionally, there’s a lot of available private equity funds that need to be invested in new opportunities sooner or later.
“Both factors could lead to a significant rise in mid-market private equity activity, given the right market conditions. The foundation for making deals is already in place. As greater economic, political, and financial stability returns, it won’t be too long before the M&A market becomes active again.”
Earlier this month, DIGIT reported on another KPMG analysis which found that venture capital into Scottish startups specifically were down around 80% in deal value in Q2 ‘23 compared to Q2 ‘22.
A “technical issue” has impacted air traffic control systems in the UK today, with NATS — the National Air Traffic Services — having to restrict the flow of aircraft.
In a statement made to DIGIT around lunchtime, NATS said: “We are currently experiencing a technical issue and have applied traffic flow restrictions to maintain safety. Engineers are working to find and fix the fault. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.”
They later publicly stated around 2PM that “This morning’s technical issue is affecting our ability to automatically process flight plans. Until our engineers have resolved this, flight plans are being input manually which means we cannot process them at the same volume, hence we have applied traffic flow restrictions.”
While NATS provided an update shortly after 3PM to state that the technical issue in question had been remedied, there are consequent flight delays and cancellations across the UK network — including inbound flights. UK airspace continues to remain open.
NATS advises travellers to “Please check with your airline on the status of your flight.”
Edinburgh Airport further advises that passengers “should not come to the airport before checking with their airline on the status of their flight.”
Scottish airline Loganair — which was one of the first airlines to publish a comment regarding the situation — posted the following on X, formerly Twitter, just before noon: “There has been a network-wide failure of UK air traffic control computer systems this morning. Although we are hopeful of being able to operate most intra-Scotland flights on the basis of local coordination and with a minimum of disruption, north-south and international flights maybe subject to delays.
If you are flying with us today, please check our website for the latest information about your flight before setting off for the airport.”
Approximately an hour later, shortly after 1pm, Loganair provided a further update, saying: “Due to a network-wide outage of Air Traffic Control systems, delays and disruption are expected throughout the day for all airlines. Under these circumstances, Loganair is offering passengers travelling today the opportunity to rebook within the next 48 hours, free of charge, where there is a seat available. Please note that unless your flight is cancelled, no refund will be offered for any operating service.”
The technical issue has arisen at a particularly inopportune time, not least due to the Summer Bank Holiday across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and the winding down of the Edinburgh Fringe festival.
This is an ongoing story. More to follow.
Have you been affected by today’s air traffic flow restrictions? Please email editor@digit.fyi and tell us your story.
To unearth their findings, the technological research and consulting firm drew from data which was collected from 2020 through 2023, as part of a benchmarking survey of 227 CISOs.
For instance, one major insight gleaned from the research is that 69% of the most successful CISOs dedicate time to professional development activities on a recurring basis, compared to the 36% of bottom-performing CISOs who do this.
The top performers scored in the highest one-third when respondents were measured on the key areas of CISO effectiveness, which include functional leadership, information security service delivery, enterprise responsiveness, and scaled governance. The bottom-performing CISOs were in the lowest one-third.
Speaking on how successful CISOs regularly direct time and effort to professional development, Chiara Girardi, senior principal of research at Gartner, said: “As the CISO role continues to rapidly evolve, it becomes even more critical for security and risk leaders to protect time for professional development.
“Developing new skills and knowledge as the role changes is essential to effectively serve as a strategic advisor to the business – the new CISO paradigm.”
The findings also outlined that 77% of the most successful CISOs initiate discussions within the enterprise on evolving security norms as to stay ahead of threats — this is compared to the 50% of bottom-performing CISOs who do this.
“No organisation can be fully protected against every cyber-threat,” noted Girardi. “The most effective CISOs stay apprised of existing and emerging risks so they can provide leadership with context around the most significant threats facing the business, to influence investments and risk decisions accordingly.”
According to the research and consulting firm, another key behaviour — shown in 67% of top-performers and 28% of bottom-performers — is engaging and collaborating with senior business decision-makers to define enterprise risk appetite.
Relatedly, 65% of top-performing CISOs build relationships with senior decision-makers outside of a project context.
Further, the most successful CISOs also regularly meet with three times as many non-IT stakeholders — for example, the heads of marketing, the heads of sales, and other business unit leaders — compared to IT stakeholders.
On this, Girardi said: “Non-IT functions are key partners that can take technology and cybersecurity decisions outside of IT.”
“By setting aside dedicated time to build relationships with senior business decision-makers across the enterprise, CISOs can cultivate an environment where decision makers understand and care about cybersecurity, as well as consider cybersecurity implications in their decision making.”
Lastly, Gartner’s research found that 63% of top-performing CISOs proactively engage in securing emerging technologies — the likes of which include artificial intelligence, machine learning, and blockchain — while just 38% of bottom-performing CISOs do so.
“As AI adoption proliferates, CISOs are already behind the curve in assessing its risk impact,” Girardi stipulated. “Threat actors are always one step ahead, so CISOs must be more proactive in understanding the security impact of technologies like generative AI and communicating those risks with senior business leadership.”
While, as Gartner’s latest findings highlight, there may be certain behaviours which differentiate the performance of chief information security officers, the majority of CISOs in 2023 are facing the same, shared issues.
Earlier this year, Gartner also predicted that nearly half of cybersecurity leaders will change jobs by 2025, with 25% leaving for different roles entirely due to various work-related stressors.
Dan Schiappa, the chief product officer at cybersecurity firm Arctic Wolf, hasn’t seen the global cyber landscape change over the years so much as he’s seen it metamorphose. And, despite defenders’ continued work in thwarting and responding to attacks, the attackers seem to remain one step ahead.
“As defensive technologies get better, it’s an arms race with the adversarial part of the market. No matter how good we get, they just seem to get even better,” he explained.
Amid attackers’ seemingly ever-growing intelligence and agility, there’s the legal sector: an industry where there’s continual handling of highly sensitive information and data, as well as significantly-sized funds, making it a prime target for those with nefarious intentions. For instance, in its research, the Solicitors Regulation Authority found that 75% of solicitors firms had been the target of a cyber-attack.
“Security is something that legal firms know they need, but they don’t have the expertise to drive it themselves,” Schiappa noted. Given that cybersecurity proficiency isn’t always available in-house, how can legal firms help bolster their defences, thereby lessening both the likelihood of attack and the severity of an attack if it occurs? Further, how can a robust security programme be put in place?
As well as serving as the CPO for Arctic Wolf, Schiappa has held high-ranking, security-related positions at the likes of Sophos and Microsoft. And after sitting down with him, here are a handful of cyber considerations and recommendations that legal firms — as well as applicable advice for all firms, regardless of sector — can take heed of.
Minimising Human Error Through Effective Security Training
When discussing cybersecurity, it’s hard not to mention the matter of human error. Just last month, DIGIT reported on research where 55% of cybersecurity professionals cited human error as the number one cause of cloud data breaches, ahead of exploitation of vulnerabilities at 21%.
“Human beings are still the weakest link in cybersecurity,” said Schiappa, and with the act of phishing and socially-engineered attacks, it’s “very low-hanging fruit” for adversaries. Further, Schiappa underscored that “with generative artificial intelligence, that’s going to become even more difficult to defend against and easier to perpetrate.”
With this in mind, training employees on cybersecurity resilience and associated best practices continually — their strengths are rooted in other areas, rather than cyber, after all — is key.
“Train your people — make sure they understand to look at everything with a sceptical eye, and that they’re very cautious about things, particularly if there’s a time urgency to it. That’s how they usually get people to throw away their logic: the attackers try to create some urgent, emergency situation where people respond and forget about the basics.”
Prioritising Cybersecurity When Pivoting to the Cloud
The COVID-19 pandemic helped to accelerate many industries’ digital transformation efforts, not least with cloud adoption and uptake. In the legal sector alone, 70% of respondents reported that they used cloud computing up from 58% in 2019, according to the 2022 American Bar Association Legal Technology Survey Report.
However, with a shift to the cloud comes additional security considerations — and it’s being cognizant of these, as well as adhering to related best practices, that can help firms to ensure that they’re being as cyber secure as possible.
“‘I don’t have to worry about security anymore, because I put everything in the cloud’ — that’s a famous last words statement. It just moved the cheese, as they say, to another area of concern. Companies have to recognise that it’s just different security,” explained Schiappa. “There’s no doubt that there are better things about the cloud than traditional IT infrastructure, but there are also things that are different that you have to protect.”
Speaking of the benefits, one notable positive of the cloud is that it can help companies to centralise data — especially useful when working with supply chain partners. However, Schiappa advocated for firms to create a cloud environment where data can never reside locally, as to reduce risk.
As an example, Schiappa mentioned Microsoft 365, and the configuration option that enables an organisation’s users to download items to their desktop. “Just turn that off,” he said. “Don’t allow that to happen — force it to take place in the browser, do not let anyone keep a local copy of it.”
What’s more, Schiappa says that data on the cloud needs to be encrypted. “One of the oldest and most trusted forms of security that people forget? To encrypt the data. They’ll put up 57 levels of defence and then if someone can get through it they just get free access to the data. Encrypt it — that’s the last line of defence. Vendors like Microsoft and Amazon and others have great mechanisms for doing that.”
Being Security-minded When Utilising Sector-specific Tech
In 2023, firms can work in a more streamlined, productive manner due to the harnessing and proliferation of innovative sector-specific technologies, such as lawtech tools. A LawtechUK report from 2021 highlighted this burgeoning market, stating that UK lawtech startups and scaleups are growing at a rate of 101%, outpacing the likes of fintech and healthtech.
But when using lawtech — and most kinds of technology — there are practices to adhere to for being as cyber secure as possible.
In terms of ways to help reduce risk when using such tools, and especially when working and sharing information with folks both inside and outwith your firm, Schiappa said: “One is access control, and what I would call a zero trust model.
“You are providing many different outside and inside people to have access to things, and so making sure that you’re limiting what those people can get to is one great element of it. So in the event that they are compromised, you’ve reduced the damage of what they can do inside the organisation.”
Encrypting data within the tools you use is, again, a necessity. Schiappa used an especially good analogy for describing why encryption is wholly important: “I always say if someone breaks into a jewellery store and they can’t steal any of the jewels, it’s a nuisance — but you can wait for the police to show up. If someone’s in there, smashing into the jewellery cases and running out with the jewels, that’s bad — and with encryption, they can break in but not get the jewels. That’s a really important aspect of it.”
While ransomware attacks occur in — and encrypt and exfiltrate data from — all industries, Schiappa mentioned that “Attackers look at the legal industry as high-quality, high-value data, and with a soft underbelly. For them, that’s just the perfect combination.”
Schiappa warned that in the contemporary world, ransomware attacks against firms are highly targeted — meaning firms need to preempt such attacks with truly robust cybersecurity defences.
“As we see today, ransomware isn’t like how it used to be in what I would call the ‘pray-and-spray’ model, where you just throw it out as wide as you can, and hope it sticks somewhere. Now, it’s very targeted.”
“They’re going to know quite a bit about the firm already, they’re going to know who’s in the firm, they’re gonna know potentially who the clients are, what data they’re gonna have. They’re gonna go very systematically through that in a very complex way. So, it’s tough for firms to defend without the right security protections,” Schiappa explained.
Complicating matters even further is how generative artificial intelligence could augment ransomware and its deployment moving forward.
“Ransomware-as-a-Service has been around for a long time, but AI is going to make that even more of a problem. You’re going to have very smart, capable attackers who can build very sophisticated models and make those available to other people.
“It’s like the proliferation of nuclear bombs: it takes a lot of science, a lot of money, a lot of research to build one, but if you start giving them to just anybody out there it really raises the risk factor, and that’s what AI is going to do on the cyber landscape. They’ll make the tools and arm other people.”
With the increased threat of ransomware — and in addition to the myriad threats of the current cyber landscape — Schiappa advocates for firms that don’t have the necessary in-house expertise to partner with a company that takes a holistic approach to cybersecurity defence.
“So, somebody who can help you get your basic security hygiene in order, somebody who can do security monitoring for you, somebody who can respond when you have an incident — because the sooner you can respond to an incident, the less damage you’re gonna have. All of those things, interconnected, is really what a good security programme is.”
Reducing Risk in a Continually Evolving Cyber Landscape
As DIGIT’s interview with Schiappa began winding down, he restated how legal firms are more aware of cyber risks now than ever before.
This, undoubtedly, is cause for celebration. But as the cyber landscape continues to shift, evolve, and metamorphose further, a robust defence against attackers will become even more needed for law firms — and all firms, regardless of sector — than it already is.
In a joint statement, the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) — in collaboration with data protection and privacy authorities from non-EU member countries such as Australia, Canada, and Hong Kong — have urged social media companies to protect users’ data from unlawful data scraping.
The twelve regulatory bodies wrote that social media companies have data protection obligations regarding third-party scraping from their sites, and that the “obligations will generally apply to personal information whether that information is publicly accessible or not.” Further, “mass data scraping of personal information can constitute a reportable data breach in many jurisdictions.”
In light of this, the authorities advised social media companies and other public websites to “carefully consider” the legality of various kinds of data scraping within their relevant jurisdictions, and in response implement measures to protect and counteract against unlawful scraping of data.
The call comes amid increased reports of mass data scraping from social media platforms and others websites that host publicly available data and information. It also coincides with the intensified interest in and usage of artificial intelligence tools, which usually need vast amounts of data for training. However, the statement doesn’t specifically cite artificial intelligence as one of the reasons underpinning the increase in socia media scraping reports.
The regulators also underscored several privacy concerns on this front, including the use of scraped data for targeted cyber-attacks which leverage social engineering or phishing methods, as well as identify fraud and impersonation, unauthorised political or intelligence gathering purposes, and unwanted direct marketing or spam.
More broadly, the regulators are concerned that mass data scraping means that individuals lose control of their personal data and information when it’s scraped without their knowledge and against their expectations. “For example, data scrapers may aggregate and combine scraped data from one site with other personal information, and use it for unexpected purposes. This can undermine individuals’ trust […] with potentially detrimental impacts on the digital economy,” they wrote.
To protect individuals’ personal data and information and from the associated privacy harms, the regulators proposed a multi-layered mitigative approach. For instance, deploying CAPTCHAs to detect bots and blocking IP addresses, rate limiting the number of visits per hour or day by one account to other account profiles, and implementing an in-house team or specific roles to monitor and respond to scraping activities are just some of the suggested actions that social media firms can take.
The regulators stipulated that their joint statement and the advice within it was sent directly to many big tech companies owning well-used social media platforms. These include Alphabet Inc. (YouTube), ByteDance Ltd (TikTok), Meta Platforms, Inc. (Instagram, Facebook and Threads), Microsoft Corporation (LinkedIn), Sina Corp (Weibo), and X Corp. (X, formerly known as Twitter).
The authorities also offered advice that can be taken on an individual level, as to help users minimise the privacy risks from data scraping. This includes reading how social media companies and other sites share personal information, including their privacy policies, and being cautious about sharing sensitive information that may put them at risk of threats such as identity fraud and theft.
Speaking on the statement’s publication, Stephen Bonner, the ICO deputy commissioner for regulatory supervision, said: “This joint statement helps provide certainty, and consistency across borders, in how data protection applies to information people post online. Organisations must have a lawful reason for collecting and using people’s data, even when it is publicly available.
“Social media companies have obligations under UK data protection law to protect the information people post on their platforms.
“We are seeing increased reports of mass data scraping from social media and remind organisations that such incidents may require reporting to the ICO as a personal data breach.”
Amid the recent proliferation of generative artificial intelligence tools, Meta has officially released “Code Llama,” a large language model (LLM) to generate code, support code completion, and to help debug human-written work.
The model, which is a code-specialised version of Meta’s Llama 2 LLM having been trained on code-specific datasets, supports prevalent languages such as Python, C++, C#, PHP, Java, Typescript, and Bash, among others. On top of creating and aiding with code, it can also generate natural language about code.
In the same vein as GitHub Copilot and Amazon’s CodeWhisperer, Code Llama “has the potential to make workflows faster and more efficient for developers and lower the barrier to entry for people who are learning to code,” according to Meta. “The goal is to make developer workflows more efficient so that they can focus on the most human-centric aspects of their job, rather than repetitive tasks.”
Code Llama itself comes in three different sizes: 7 billion parameters, 13 billion parameters, and 34 billion parameters. As is the case with LLM AI models, the number of parameters is a measure of the size and complexity of the model. Each of these models were trained with 500 billion tokens (i.e. units) of code, alongside code-related data.
While the 7B and 13B models are comparatively faster due to their sizes and more appropriate for lower-latency tasks, including real-time code completion, the 34B model “returns the best results and allows for better coding assistance,” according to the company.
Further, in addition to the different sizes of Code Llama, Meta has created “Code Llama – Python,” and “Code Llama – Instruct.” The Python variation has been “fine-tuned on 100B tokens of Python code,” with the company citing that Python is the most benchmarked language for code generation. The Code Llama – Instruct variation, meanwhile, “has been fine-tuned to generate helpful and safe answers in natural language,” and is recommended to be used alongside Code Llama.
The company released Code Llama for both research and commercial use under the same community licence as Llama 2, which DIGIT also covered the release of last month.
Breaking that figure down, 67% said they use them both in work and outside of it, 25% said they just use them at work, and 6% said they only used such tools when outside of work.
The majority — 70% of respondents — noted that AI tools offer them an advantage in their work.
Further, 41% said that AI coding tools can help with the prevention of burnout, which is certainly not uncommon for developers. Haystack Analytics, for instance, found that 83% of software devs are suffering from burnout.
UKI2S — the purpose of which is to build and grow early-stage technology companies stemming from the UK’s research base — is an evergreen fund managed by Future Planet Capital, an impact-led venture capital firm.
The fund is backed by the likes of the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT), the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, and The James Hutton Institute. It also received a £37m boost last month.
Since its inception in 2002, UKI2S has invested £30m in over 90 companies. UKRI has stated that the fund’s investments have attracted a return of more than £700 million in private sector investments, and that for every £1 invested by UKI2S public partners, a return of £25 is achieved in private sector investment.
An independent assessment of UKI2S’ economic and broader benefits in 2020 revealed that 75% of companies supported by the funding wouldn’t have been created or would have ceased to operate.
In line with the UK Government’s Levelling Up agenda, 50% of total investments from UKI2S have been made outside London and the Greater Southeast of England.
One example of the type of company which the fund is distributing investment towards is SOLASTA Bio, the University of Glasgow spinout agtech company. The firm creates nature-inspired, small molecule insect control products for the global agricultural market using technology developed at the university. SOLASTA Bio received £4 million in funding earlier this year, led by Yield Lab Europe.
Another is the Oxford-based Luffy AI, a spinout from the UK Atomic Energy Authority. It develops adaptive intelligence for the control and optimised performance of robotics, machines, and industrial processes. Around this time last year, Chrysalix Venture Capital announced a new investment in Luffy AI. The deal amount was not disclosed.
Speaking on the surpassing of the £100m figure, George Freeman, the science minister, said: “Innovation is about the seed of an idea being brought to life and I am proud that public investment is continuing to kickstart vital scientific discoveries, including new cancer treatments and technology to identify antimicrobial resistance, that can transform our society’s health and prosperity.
“This funding, reaching over £100 million with today’s investment, has so far supported more than a thousand high-quality jobs across the UK and secured more than £700 million of further private investment, in turn levelling up our country and boosting our economy.”
Andrew Muir, investment director at Future Planet Capital Group and fund principal for UKI2S, also commented, saying: “The continuous support and investments from our public sector partners solidify the Fund’s position in the early-stage ecosystem for ground-breaking ideas.
“We are thrilled to continue enabling the growth of innovative ventures that will shape the future of industries and benefit the UK economy.”
The UK Government has officially confirmed that the anticipated global summit on artificial intelligence (AI) safety will take place on 1 and 2 November, and at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire.
Governments across the globe, AI companies, and researchers are set to come together for much-needed talks concerning the safe development and use of the technology, as well as how risks can potentially be mitigated through co-ordinated international action, amid its rapid advancement.
The AI safety summit was first announced by prime minister Rishi Sunak in June this year, after a series of discussions and meetings from members of the UK Government with world leaders, tech leaders, and businesspeople regarding AI.
The early November summit is expected to build on the ongoing work at international forums such as the UN, the Global Partnership on AI, and the Council of Europe.
“The UK has long been home to the transformative technologies of the future, so there is no better place to host the first ever global AI safety summit than at Bletchley Park this November,” said the prime minister today.
“To fully embrace the extraordinary opportunities of artificial intelligence, we must grip and tackle the risks to ensure it develops safely in the years ahead.
“With the combined strength of our international partners, thriving AI industry and expert academic community, we can secure the rapid international action we need for the safe and responsible development of AI around the world.”
The location of Bletchley Park is a rather fitting place for the UK AI safety summit to be held. It was once the top-secret headquarters for codebreakers during World War II, housing the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), with the likes of Alan Turing being a part of the GC&CS team of codebreakers. It’s now cited as the “birthplace of modern computing.”
Iain Standen, the CEO of the Bletchley Park Trust, commented: ”Bletchley Park Trust is immensely privileged to have been chosen as the venue for the first major international summit on AI safety this November, and we look forward to welcoming the world to our historic site.
“It is fitting that the very spot where leading minds harnessed emerging technologies to influence the successful outcome of World War Two will, once again, be the crucible for international co-ordinated action.
“We are incredibly excited to be providing the stage for discussions on global safety standards, which will help everyone manage and monitor the risks of artificial intelligence.”
While the details of confirmed attendees aren’t yet known, the UK Government stipulated that they will be announced “in due course.”
Regulation, AI, and the UK
Tech Secretary Michelle Donelan said today that “International collaboration is the cornerstone of our approach to AI regulation” — but over the last few months, there’s been uncertainty within the UK about just how effectively the technology will be regulated here.
The UK Government is taking a non-statutory approach, thereby relying on regulators to oversee the use of artificial intelligence in their specific areas while following the five principles of safety, transparency, fairness, accountability, and contestability, as outlined in the UK Government’s AI whitepaper published earlier this year.
While Britain’s equality watchdog agreed with a principle-based framework for regulating AI, it stated that a greater focus on human rights and equality — alongside much greater funding for regulators like itself — was needed.
This is just one of the insights gleaned from the latest Barclays Business Barometer, in which 595 SME leaders were asked a series of questions in a study conducted by YouGov on behalf of Barclays. It was noted that the sample was representative regarding region and industry.
Concerning the headline statistic that innovation-minded SMEs are spending nearly half of annual income on technology, the Barometer found that 44% are doing so to future-proof their business and 45% to increase productivity as a mitigative manoeuvre against the backdrop of rising interest rates and costs.
The Barometer highlighted how retailers in particular are adopting and utilising contemporary technologies in a bid to better reach customers and drive growth. For instance, while the research found that 66% of retail SMEs are open to embracing new technologies, the past year has already seen retailers actively committing financial resources to technology to enhance operations, such as data analytics (18%) and artificial intelligence and machine learning (12%).
What’s more, 41% of retailer SMEs have established dedicated technology teams within their businesses, with 13 people on average working as part of these teams.
This comes amid the positive news that 57% of SMEs reported revenue growth last quarter, marking the highest level in 18 months. The majority (62%) of SMEs also believe this trend will continue further, predicting revenue increases in a year’s time.
Retailers are especially confident about growth over the next year, with 85% reporting a positive outlook when compared to the last 12 months.
Commenting on the latest Barometer findings, Colin O’Flaherty, head of SME at Barclaycard Payments, said: “It’s promising to see that SMEs are feeling more optimistic about revenue growth and are eager to invest in cutting-edge technology to future-proof their companies.
“Retail SMEs in particular have displayed a remarkable agility in adapting to evolving consumer behaviours by adopting emerging technologies – setting the stage for a brighter year ahead.”
Relatedly, and according to a 2022 report from Sage, SME growth and performance driven by tech is directly contributing £216 billion each year to the UK economy. However, the report highlights that economic modelling shows a further £232bn per year could be unlocked.
Earlier this year, DIGIT reported on the news that the Hartree Centre — the promoter of digital innovation in the UK — awarded £4.5 million to three universities to become regional digital transformation hubs for SMEs.
As regional digital transformation hubs, the aim is to deliver accessible support for SMEs to improve their competitiveness and growth through the utilisation of digital technologies and methods.
The funding was made as part of the Hartree National Centre for Digital Innovation programme, helping to equip UK businesses with the skills and knowledge to adopt digital technologies like AI, data analytics, supercomputing, and quantum computing.
Sir Tom Hunter, the Scottish serial entrepreneur, has called for corporation tax to be cut in Scotland for key global growth areas such as big data and artificial intelligence (AI), as to drive increased levels of high-value investment.
The comments were made as part of the foreword to a new Oxford Economics report, titled Lessons from Ireland for Scotland’s Economy, in which he proposes tax reform for targeted areas as one part of the answer for clinching more global investment opportunities.
“Here’s my suggestion to Holyrood and Westminster – make all of Scotland a 15% corporate tax zone for three key global growth sectors: renewables and low carbon manufacture and services; life sciences and medical technologies and software, big data and AI,” Hunter wrote.
In April of this year, corporation tax — which is UK reserved — was raised from 19% to 25% for companies with over £250,000 in profits.
“The answer is not progressive taxation as we learn from the Irish experience – it’s a focussed, low (and at one point no) tax system that targets sticky jobs in growth sectors in a highly focussed manner,” he noted.
On the “Irish experience” specifically, Hunter referenced that Ireland drives foreign direct investment (FDI) through multiple incentives, “not least a 12.5% corporation tax rate moving to 15% in 2025.
“In 2021 this drove 249 such investments compared to Scotland’s 122,” Hunter mentioned.
To help further bolster economic growth, Hunter suggested Scotland should grow its own robust sovereign wealth fund, taking inspiration from the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund.
Writing on the recently announced Scottish Innovation Fund drawn up by the Scottish Government, Hunter noted: “The Innovation Fund of circa £100m over ten years launched a couple of months back is frankly not enough – R & D funding in Scotland is circa £4.5 billion per annum; £100m will transform very little indeed.”
Hunter also described the announcements of two new Investment Zones for Scotland in June — the Glasgow City Region and the North East of Scotland — as “welcome,” but also that “we are talking £16m per annum for five years; not to be sniffed at but hardly jaw dropping either.
“Moreover all of Scotland should be a competitive location not just the Glasgow City Region and the North East of Scotland.”
Before concluding his foreword, Hunter mentioned that “It’s time for a grown-up debate and action over how we make Scotland an economic powerhouse. We need to stop doing those things that don’t add any value and focus on what delivers otherwise, with a ticking demographic time bomb, we will leave an unbelievably appalling legacy for the next generation of Scots to contend with.”
Text pests are people who use phone numbers and email addresses given in a business capacity — for instance, when somebody wants a receipt sent digitally, or after ordering food — to then contact individuals with inappropriate propositions.
Specifically, after surveying just shy of 2,300 UK adults, the commissioned research found that 17% of the public have had their personal information given for a business reason then used for a romantic or sexual proposition.
This includes 30% of 18- to 24-year-olds, 29% of 25- to 34-year-olds, and 25% of 35- to 44-year olds, highlighting how customer data isn’t being responsibly protected.
In terms of geography, London was found to be the most common geographic region where this takes place, with 33% of residents reporting that they’ve been subsequently contacted by a text pest.
While an illegal act, the survey underscored that 9% of the public think that the use of personal information provided for business reasons for romantic or sexual propositions is legal. Over half (56%) believe it to be illegal, and just under a quarter of people (24%) believe it to be neither illegal nor legal, but rather “a matter of personal judgement.”
Younger people are more likely to mistakenly believe text pesting is a legal act, with 14% of 18- to 34-year-olds believing it to be legal, compared to the 2% of those aged over 55. Further, 12% of men think it’s legal, compared to 5% of women.
Lastly, regarding morality and ethics, the survey uncovered that 66% of the public believe the use of personal information provided for business reasons for romantic or sexual propositions is morally wrong.
This is while 20% believe it to be neither morally right nor wrong, and 5% believe it to be morally right. Women are more likely to believe it is morally wrong, with 74% reporting so compared to 58% of men.
Further, older people are much more likely to believe it isn’t morally right, with 76% of those aged over 55 believing so, compared to the 57% of 18- to 34-year-olds who share the same view.
In response to the findings, the ICO has launched a call for victims to come forward, as to help the regulator gather evidence on the impact of illegal text pesting.
Commenting on the issue, Emily Keaney — deputy commissioner, regulatory policy at the ICO — said: “People have the right to order a pizza, or give their email for a receipt, or have shopping delivered, without then being asked for sex or a date a little while later. They have a right to know that when they hand over their personal information, that it will not then be used in ways that they would not be comfortable with.
“But our research today shows a disturbingly high number of people, particularly young people, are falling prey to these text pests.
“There may be, amongst some, an outdated notion that to use someone’s personal details given to you in a business context to ask them out is romantic or charming. Put quite simply, it is not – it is against the law.
“If you are running a customer facing business, you have a responsibility to protect the data of your customers, including from your employees misusing it. We are writing to major businesses in food and parcel delivery to remind them that there are no excuses, and there can be no looking the other way.”
According to the latest forecast from Gartner, the global semiconductor industry is set to reach roughly £41bn ($53 billion) in revenue in 2023, marking an increase of around 20.9% over 2022.
The demand for AI semiconductors, or chips — which include specialised graphics processing units (GPUs), application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) — is increasing due to their ability to efficiently execute artificial intelligence workloads.
Amid the international push for AI computing power, the technological research and consulting firm also predicts that worldwide AI semiconductor industry revenue will increase by approximately 25.6% to around £52bn ($67.1bn) in 2024.
Further, by 2027, it’s expected that AI semiconductor revenues will be more than double the size of the market in 2023, hitting roughly £93bn ($119.4bn).
As Alan Priestley, VP analyst at Gartner, said: “The developments in generative AI and the increasing use of a wide range AI-based applications in data centers, edge infrastructure and endpoint devices require the deployment of high performance graphics processing units (GPUs) and optimized semiconductor devices. This is driving the production and deployment of AI chips.”
Priestley also noted that “For many organizations, large scale deployments of custom AI chips will replace the current predominant chip architecture – discrete GPUs – for a wide range of AI-based workloads, especially those based on generative AI techniques.”
The latest Gartner forecast comes during a series of notable semiconductor-related developments pertaining to the UK.
Arm, the Cambridge-based chip designing giant that’s been described as the “crown jewel” of the UK’s technology industry, has today officially filed paperwork to sell its shares in the US — delivering a consequent blow to the London Stock Exchange and the UK.
The semiconductor design firm, which was founded in 1990, has over the decades developed and licensed what it describes as high-performance, energy-efficient, and low-cost chips. Some analysts expect Arm’s initial public offering (IPO) to be the biggest of 2023.
Just yesterday, on 21 August, DIGIT also covered reports that the UK Government is to spend up to £100 million on procuring high-powered chips for the development of AI technologies through a national “AI Research Resource.”
In a comment made to DIGIT, a spokesperson for the Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology said: “We are committed to supporting a thriving compute environment which maintains the UK’s position as a leader across science, innovation and technology.
“The funding for the AI Research Resource is part of our £900 million compute investment, as announced in the Spring Budget and which will be delivered by UKRI.
“No decisions have been taken on who will provide hardware for the Resource, and further announcements will follow in due course.”
The reports of the procurement come just months after an independent review into the UK’s computing abilities, which noted that “The UK has great talent in AI with a vibrant start-up ecosystem, but public investment in AI compute is seriously lagging.”
A UK Government official apparently briefed on the UK Government’s chip procurement plans reportedly told the Guardian that the £100m figure is far too low compared to investment from the likes of the EU, US, and China.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is planning to spend up to £100 million on chip procurement amid the global race for artificial intelligence (AI) computing power, according to new reports.
The UK Government has reportedly been in conversation with Nvidia, Intel, and AMD about procuring high-powered chips for the development of AI technologies through a national “AI Research Resource.”
First revealed by the Telegraph, the effort is allegedly being driven by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The Telegraph stated that it’s believed that the UK Government is in the advanced stages of an up to 5,000 graphics processing unit (GPU) order from Nvidia.
GPUs from the likes of Nvidia power artificial intelligence, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot — which has sparked the explosive interest in and usage of generative artificial intelligence technologies recently.
A spokeperson for the Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology told DIGIT: “We are committed to supporting a thriving compute environment which maintains the UK’s position as a leader across science, innovation and technology.
“The funding for the AI Research Resource is part of our £900 million compute investment, as announced in the Spring Budget and which will be delivered by UKRI.
“No decisions have been taken on who will provide hardware for the Resource, and further announcements will follow in due course.”
The reports of the £100m chip procurement follow March’s independent review into the UK’s AI computing capabilities, which criticised the deficiency of compute power in the country.
“The UK has great talent in AI with a vibrant start-up ecosystem, but public investment in AI compute is seriously lagging,” the report read. It also noted that “there are significant shortages in public accelerator capacity in the UK, with fewer than 1,000 NVIDIA A100 GPUs available to researchers.”
It also mentioned that as of November 2022, the UK had only 1.3% share of the global compute capacity, and that, “Meanwhile, other countries continue to bolster their compute capabilities.”
A UK Government official seemingly briefed on the chip procurement plans reportedly told the Guardian that the £100m figure is far too low compared to investment from the likes of the EU, US, and China.
Relatedly, earlier this year, the UK Government unveiled its £1 billion semiconductor investment strategy, made in a bid to help improve and accelerate the domestic chip sector.
The US and EU have pledged roughly $50bn (£40bn) and €43bn (£37bn) respectively to semiconductor — or chip — funding to build up their domestic industry.
However, the £1bn investment was also seen as too low by experts when contrasted with investments from international peers, with Labour shadow culture minister Lucy Powell saying that the plan showed “significantly less ambition than our competitors.”
Biometric data is personally identifiable information, and relates to somebody’s biological and behavioural characteristics, and has been extracted or analysed by technology. Biometric technologies are used in a variety of ways, from iris scanning to fingerprint recognition.
The regulator’s draft biometric data guidance is for organisations using — or considering the use of — biometric recognition systems, as well as vendors of these systems. It lays out how data protection law applies when using biometric data in biometric recognition systems, and offers relevant advice.
For instance, it stipulates that a data-protection-by-design approach must be undertaken, advocates that a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) should be carried out before using a biometric recognition system, and suggests what to do concerning the risks of discrimination, among other things.
However, and highlighting how the draft guidance isn’t completely extensive, the ICO noted that “This guidance is not intended to be a comprehensive guide to compliance when using biometric data. Where this guidance refers to principles already addressed in our guidance, we provide links to the relevant further reading.”
A consultation on the regulator’s draft guidance will now run until 20 October. The second phase of the guidance, which is set to cover biometric classification and data protection, will launch early next year and include a call for evidence, the ICO has said.
While biometrics and its associated technologies can — and already does — offer numerous opportunities, particularly concerning security, accessibility, and convenience, there are various pitfalls. Not least, as the ICO stated in the investigation report regarding biometric data being misplaced or taken: “Unlike passwords, if your biometrics data is lost or stolen, you cannot easily change your fingerprint, face or retina.”
In terms of some key risks with myriad biometrics, the ICO’s investigation report highlighted the potential for systemic bias via underlying algorithms in facial recognition. Pupillometry, meanwhile — the measuring of the size and response of a person’s pupil to stimuli — may reveal subconscious responses and highly personal data without the individual’s choice. Further, brain analysis may also reveal subconscious responses and highly sensitive personal data.
The regulatory body predicted that neurotech — technology which has been developed to interface with the nervous system, such as to monitor or modulate the brain — will become widespread over the next ten years and that, if not appropriately trialled and tested, there’s a risk that that inherent bias and inaccurate data could become embedded in neurotech.
New data released by the University and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) shows that not only has acceptance rates for people studying computing courses reached its highest level since 2019, but there is also a record number of women pursuing computing.
That said, the number of women studying computing is significantly unrepresentative, and the same being true for engineering and technology degrees.
Across the UK this year, a total of 26,430 students have been accepted onto computing courses, with a further 24,130 onto engineering and technology courses. In 2022, the numbers were 24,910 and 24,810 respectively, while in 2019 it was 23,060 and 23,770.
In terms of gender, the number of women accepted onto computing degrees this year is 5,520, while for engineering and technology this is 5,100. Comparatively, 20,910 men have been accepted onto computing courses, and 19,030 on engineering and tech courses.
In spite of these numbers, there has been a clear upward trajectory in the number of women being accepted to study computing. For instance, in 2022, the number was 4,830, meaning there’s been an increase of 690 in 2023. In 2019, the number was 4,040.
The British Computer Society (BCS) pointed to the rise of AI as an underlying reason for this increase in applications.
Specifically, Rashik Parmar MBE, chief executive of BCS, said: “Teenagers in the UK know that AI will change the world forever; it shouldn’t surprise us to see this soaring demand for computing degrees.
“AI is already reshaping how cancer is diagnosed, how we tackle climate change, how we work and how we communicate. The thousands of young men and women applying for computing through UCAS do so because they want a say in this future.”
However, and again, UCAS’ data reflected how computing and tech in general remains a male-dominated area: out of all the computing applications made by UK 18-year-olds, only 18% came from women, marking a 1% increase compared to 2022, and a 2% increase from 2021.
Last year, in a move to help increase computing uptake in Scotland, the Scottish Government plugged £1.3 million into computer science provisions in schools in response to recommendations made in the Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review (STER).
The STER report, published in 2020 and authored by chief entrepreneurial advisor Mark Logan, also advised that the Scottish Government could inspire more girls to consider computing classes and courses, not least through information campaigns.
“By the time pupils take the Higher Computing Science qualification, only 16% of them are female on average; a ratio that worsens as they continue on through university and into industry. Put simply, gender role stereotyping removes almost half of our best future engineers,” the report read.
“It would be economically and societally beneficial if Scotland was to lead on addressing this aberration. Gender role stereotyping is established by society during the primary-school years, and it is here that work should be particularly focussed.
“We recommend that the Scottish Government conduct a sustained public information campaign aimed at countering role stereotyping as it relates to science, Computing Science and engineering, enlisting role models and others as part of that campaign.”
Organisations such as dressCode — which has been around since 2018 — are already doing important work on this front. For instance, DIGIT reported on dressCode’s hackathon event held at the University of Glasgow earlier this year, which offered young women an introduction to careers in computing.
Regarding Scottish startups, 28 deals totalling a value of £63 million took place in Q2 ‘23 — representing an around 80% drop compared to the same period last year. Specifically, in Q2 ‘22, £325m was invested across 45 deals. A year prior, in Q2 ‘21, £258m was invested across 60 deals.
The value total for the first half of 2023 stands at £133m, which is also significantly down on H1 totals for 2022 (£506m) and 2021 (£332m). However, KPMG have noted that the market was extraordinarily busy following the pandemic.
Amid the decrease in both deal value and volume, the tech sector in Scotland has continued to boast some of the quarter’s standout deals.
For instance, the quarter’s largest VC investment was put into Chemify, the University of Glasgow spinout. It received £36m in funding — led by US-based Triatomic Capital, with participation from venture firms in Hong Kong and the US, as well as Scottish investment firm Eos — to develop its technology to make complex molecules on demand.
Manus Neurodynamica, the Edinburgh-based company which develops and markets products and technologies for neuromotor assessment, also closed a £2.6m funding round for the commercialisation of its NeuroMotor Pen. The medical device has been developed to aid with the diagnosis and monitoring of neuromotor disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease.
Speaking on the report’s findings — as well as investment into the Scottish tech sector — Amy Burnett, head of KPMG private enterprise access at KPMG UK, said: “Despite the slightly downbeat figures for Q2, we continue to see promising businesses in Scotland secure investment and attention both home and abroad. This is especially true in the tech and MedTech sectors, where we’re seeing robust growth.
“Investment in AI and generative AI remain one of the few resilient areas of investment in the current market. As is always the case, those with a proven product, market fit, strong customer data, and clear paths to profitability will continue to gain attention from seed and series A investors.”
Looking at the UK as a whole, £3.2 billion was invested in UK businesses during Q2 ‘23, with 551 deals completed. Investment was down £0.39 billion on the opening quarter (£3.62 billion), and the number of deals completed fell by 23% from 715 in Q1 ‘23.
Further, more than half of the VC investment made into the UK during Q2 ’23 flowed into London, with £2.2 billion raised by businesses based there across 288 completed deals.
Commenting on the slowdown and its impacts on Scotland and more broadly, Graeme Williams, head of corporate finance M&A for Scotland at KPMG UK, said: “There’s been a visible slowdown in venture capital fundraising globally, and Scotland is no different. After two years of exceptional activity, the market has reached a more stable point.
“However, there is a noticeable sense of caution prevailing, with VC investors more wary about committing to bigger deals. The smaller investments in seed, angel, and series A stages are holding steady.”
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has released the latest results of a large-scale survey which aims to determine and rank the service quality of current account providers for both consumers and businesses in Great Britain and Ireland.
Specifically, the survey asks personal and small business current account holders how likely they are to recommend their provider to another friend, relative, or business. The survey also covers the quality of online and mobile provision, branch and overdraft services and, for small businesses, the quality of the relationship management they receive.
The results of the 11th instalment of the survey — which has been undertaken since 2016 — found that Monzo and Starling once again secured the top two positions for overall service quality satisfaction for both personal and business current account holders in Great Britain.
Behind the challenger banks was First Direct in third place for personal current account service satisfaction, and Handelsbanken ranking third for business current account service satisfaction.
At the bottom of the table this year for overall service quality satisfaction for business current account holders was Virgin Money, The Co-operative Bank, and HSBC UK at 13th, 14th, and 15th place respectively.
Meanwhile, TSB, Virgin Money, and the Royal Bank of Scotland were listed as the current bottom-ranked personal current account providers when it comes to service quality satisfaction in Great Britain.
Speaking on the latest results, Adam Land, senior director of remedies, business and financial analysis at the CMA, said: “How banks treat their customers can make an enormous difference to their daily lives, particularly when people and small businesses are feeling the pinch.
“These results make it easy for people to see in branch, or at the click of a button, which banks are listening to their customers and meeting their needs. This puts pressure on poorly performing banks to raise their game. If the service and quality offered by your bank has been below par, then you may well be able to do better by making a switch.”
The data derived from the latest survey further highlights how the two digital challenger banks have made a profound impact in the UK’s finance and banking sector in a relatively short amount of time.
In fact, since February 2022, Monzo and Starling are the providers that have held the top two positions for overall service quality for personal current account holders in Great Britain. Prior to that, in August 2021, Monzo took first place while Starling and First Direct took joint second.
Regarding overall service quality for business current account holders in Great Britain, Monzo and Starling have held the top two positions since August 2022, which was when Monzo first became a participating provider. Starling became a participating provider in August 2021.
The results of the latest survey — as well as previous ones, too — corroborate with separate research that DIGIT reported on just before the turn of the New Year. It found that Monzo led the way for good online customer service with 83% of its customers satisfied with this, and with Revolut coming in second with 78% of respondents stating they are happy.
There was a year-on-year increase of over 6% in businesses experiencing “significant” or early financial distress in Q2 2023 in Scotland. However, the increase in Scotland was smaller than the increase for the UK as a whole.
These findings come from Begbies Traynor’s — the business rescue and recovery company — Red Flag Alert, which has been measuring and reporting corporate financial distress since 2004. Its algorithms measure business distress signals drawn from company accounts, legal and financial data, and insolvency intelligence.
The Red Flag Alert data showed that from April through June of this year, the number of Scottish businesses experiencing significant distress rose by 6.3% compared with the same period the previous year.
However, this category of distress — which refers to deterioration in key financial indicators and ratios, such as working capital, retained profits, contingent liabilities, and more — also rose across the UK as a whole at the higher rate of 8.5%.
When comparing quarter-on-quarter figures, Scotland’s levels of significant distress increased by just over 1% in Q2 of 2023, compared with Q1. Across the UK, early distress rose by 3.7% since the previous quarter: of the 438,702 businesses across the UK suffering from early distress in Q2 2023, around 20,820 were in Scotland.
Somewhat positively, Scottish IT and telecommunications was one of just three sectors out of a total 22 to report decreases in the number of companies in significant financial distress compared to last year, at -0.4%. Manufacturing, meanwhile, reported a decrease of -2.2%, and the printing and packaging sector reported a decrease of over a quarter at -26.9%.
The sectors suffering the biggest increases in significant distress compared to last year included: utilities (+19.8%); leisure and cultural activities (+19%); financial services (+16.7%); real estate and property (+15.6%); and travel and tourism (+14.7%).
Speaking on the findings — and highlighting the reasons behind these numbers — Ken Pattullo, managing partner for Begbies Traynor in Scotland, commented: “Businesses are facing a perfect storm of challenges – as they struggle to recover from the catastrophic impact of the Covid pandemic, they are also now having to find funds to repay bounce back loans during the worst cost of living crisis in living memory.
“What’s more, interest rates are continuing to increase leading to unmanageable debt, and material and labour costs are also continuing to spiral along with rising inflation, the impact of the conflict in Ukraine and higher energy bills.
“In the midst of ongoing economic uncertainty, many businesses feel they are at the end of the road and simply cannot afford to continue trading. While companies in Scotland appear to be performing slightly more strongly than those across the UK, for many, time is simply running out and we expect to see a surge in company collapses in the coming months.”
While the data from Begbies Traynor’s Red Flag Alert highlights the difficulties that British businesses are facing amid a barrage — as well as the aftermath — of various external factors, it does also bring to light the regional differences between Scotland and the UK as a whole.
Relatedly, last week, DIGIT reported on a study from KPMG UK — the professional services firm — that more than a third (37%) of local areas across Scotland have been identified as High Investment Areas; places which share an expected high rate of growth in business investment.
This is in comparison to the 22% of locations across the UK that were considered to be High Investment Areas.
The digital hub includes a free carbon calculator, as well as tools to help businesses measure, track, and report on their emissions and save money by using less energy.
Further, it offers advice on a range of green actions, such as switching employee modes of transport and paying less for company electric vehicles (EVs), getting business grants, green loans, and financing for retrofitting buildings, and getting low-carbon product labels and certifications, among other things.
The new support is being targeted to the 5.5 million SMEs in the UK, with business and industry accounting for around a quarter of emissions. According to research from Sage and the International Chamber of Commerce, 90% of SMEs are keen to tackle climate change, but find it difficult to know how or where to start to find the right solutions.
Speaking on the digital hub’s launch, minister of state for energy security and net zero, Graham Stuart, said: “The UK has cut its emissions more than any other major economy in the world. More and more businesses are recognising the business benefits of reaching net zero and we’re determined to empower them to do so.
“Whether it’s fitting a low-carbon heat pump, generating energy with solar panels, or reducing the emissions from shipping goods, the new support will ensure businesses can drive towards net zero.”
The UK Business Climate Hub is being managed by the Broadway Initiative — an alliance of organisations acting to lead change towards sustainability across all aspects of the UK economy. It was developed in partnership with associations such as the Federation of Small Businesses, and with support from the likes of NatWest, HSBC, and the National Grid.
National chair of the Federation of Small Businesses, Martin McTague, said: “We are pleased to have contributed to the new UK Business Climate Hub that will provide businesses with trusted tools and information to help them navigate the net zero transition.
“SMEs recognise their role in net zero but many still find it challenging to access the relevant support and resources to play their part. This new official platform for advice and support will really help.”
The new digital hub is endorsed by business leaders — including CEOs from companies like HSBC, Siemens, and Cemex — and ministers on the new Net Zero Council, a group which is working to ensure sectors and companies have a pathway to net zero.
Entrepreneur Steven Mooney, chief executive of FundMyPitch, also commented: “One of the biggest barriers to SMEs cutting emissions is cost, with many struggling to find a credible strategy to go green without breaking the bank.
“At a time when interest rates are surging and inflation remains stubbornly high, this new hub offers invaluable guidance to empower entrepreneurs to build a truly effective green strategy.”
In June 2019, the UK Government committed to a 100% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, compared with 1990 levels — this is commonly referred to as the net zero target.
A recent independent review into the net zero target mentioned that while the UK should be proud of its progress thus far, further actions were needed from government, industry, and individuals to make the most of net zero opportunities, and that challenges remained in delivering on the UK’s ambition.
According to the recently published Digital Economy Skills Action Plan from Skills Development Scotland, digital occupations are amongst the fastest growing in Scotland, with demand for digital skills expected to continue rising into the next decade.
Importantly, digital skills are no longer the sole preserve of the technology sector. Digital talent is now essential for all of the country’s key industries on which our economy relies. In particular, the application of data science and analytics is helping Scotland’s businesses and organisations to improve decision-making, enhance forecasting accuracy and identify key opportunities for growth.
Despite their clear benefits, the same report from Skills Development Scotland crucially highlights that only 1 in 5 Scottish businesses feel fully equipped with digital technology skills. So, what can be done to harness the nation’s strengths in digital technology and enhance its data capabilities?
At Heriot-Watt University, we specialise in business, science, technology, engineering and design – subjects that make a real impact on the world and society. In particular, we have a strong reputation for digital-related degrees and offer Graduate Apprenticeships in Data Science and Software Development for Business.
GAs allow students to study for a degree-level qualification while working for a company. They combine the best of both worlds – students can gain academic knowledge as well as real-world experience, giving them the skills that they need to help grow Scotland’s economy.
For employers, GAs help to plug critical skills gaps, both for individual businesses and for the wider economy. They are an ideal way to get young people into the workplace – meeting the promises made as part of the Scottish Government’s Young Person’s Guarantee – and to increase diversity within companies and the national workforce.
Best of all they’re fully funded, making them an incredibly cost-effective way to recruit new talent and upskill or reskill existing employees.
Graduate apprentice Connor Cook found his position on Heriot-Watt’s Data Science programme whilst working as a restaurant manager. He was able to gain valuable first-hand workplace experience as a data analyst in the Strategic Planning, Performance & Projects team at Heriot-Watt alongside his studies and whilst earning enough to support his family.
With aspirations to become a full-time data analyst, he believes that the skills developed during his Graduate Apprenticeship will lay the foundations for a long and fulfilling career in data science.
As Edinburgh aims to become the ‘data capital’ of Europe and a centre of excellence in artificial intelligence and data science, it’s clear that the world of big data has enormous potential not just for Connor but for Scotland’s entire workforce. That’s why Heriot-Watt University is at the forefront of developing and delivering agile courses that can react to new and emerging growth sectors.
Interested in discovering more about how our Graduate Apprenticeships are unlocking potential for individuals and employers? Find out more today!
Amid the deepened interest in and harnessing of artificial intelligence, new research from Appraise — a network for AI policy and advocacy professionals — reveals what MPs currently do and do not trust the technology being used for.
The research, which was conducted by YouGov for Appraise, and questioned a representative sample of over 100 members of Parliament, shows that MPs’ trust in artificial intelligence varies significantly depending on its application.
When it comes to distrust, more than two-thirds (67%) of MPs are uncomfortable with the proliferation of AI-generated content, while just under half (46%) are uncomfortable with AI making decisions on credit scores and insurance premiums.
Interestingly, in both of these instances, under a quarter of respondents (23%) said they either didn’t know their positions here or were not uncomfortable or comfortable with its usage in these applications.
A particular divide in MPs’ views is seen concerning AI making decisions for harmful content moderation: 38% of MPs are uncomfortable with it, while 30% are comfortable. Just under one-third (32%) said that, again, they didn’t know or weren’t on either side.
MPs broadly trust AI when it comes to the lower risk activity of filtering emails for spam or fraud, with more than half (57%) saying they’re comfortable with AI being used in this application. That said, 26% of respondents said they didn’t know or were neither comfortable or uncomfortable with it.
With a notable proportion of MPs responding “neither” or “don’t know,” it highlights some of the members of Parliaments’ current unsureness with AI, whether that’s due to a current lack of understanding, a lack of confidence in their opinion amid the technology’s rapid development, or various other reasons.
Relatedly, the research found that 44% of MPs feel more optimistic than pessimistic about AI, compared to the 27% who feel the other way. However, 29% said they’re unsure.
Further, just 9% of MPs say the impact of AI will be fairly distributed across society, compared to 63% who say it will not.
Despite MPs’ apparent mixed views on AI, artificial intelligence and machine learning are already being used across government departments, such as the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP).
In a LinkedIn post, the Scottish Government’s chief entrepreneurial advisor has provided answers to a few of the most pertinent questions on the Scottish tech community’s mind following the sudden liquidation of CodeClan, the tech skills academy.
Most notably, in his first public statement since last Friday’s news, Mark Logan said that “we now expect that students will be able to complete their courses.”
CodeBase, the neighbour of CodeClan and the recipient of the £42 million Techscaler contract from the Scottish Government last year, is set to acquire CodeClan training materials and other assets from liquidators.
A group of former CodeClan tutors will then be contacted and paid to facilitate the teaching of the rest of the impacted students’ courses using the same training materials, according to Logan. For this period, the training team will be able to work out of one of the Techscaler sites, and have access to Techscaler resources and support.
Logan noted his appreciation of Stephen Coleman and Steven Drost of CodeBase/Techscaler, Economy Minister Neil Gray and his team of Scottish Government officials, and Scottish Tech Army’s founder Alistair Forbes for their joint involvement in the creation of this plan.
He also stated that the Scottish Government will be assisting with full funding to support this student training process.
In terms of when students and previous staff alike will be contacted, the chief entrepreneurial advisor wrote that “Codebase will shortly provide additional information on the above process and will begin to contact some of CodeClan’s former employees from early next week, with student outreach to follow shortly afterwards.”
Where was the financial support for CodeClan?
After outlining how CodeClan’s most recent cohort of students are expected to be supported, Logan then moved onto another of the prescient questions asked by members of the Scottish tech community: where was the financial support for CodeClan, not least from the Scottish Government?
In the 2020 Scottish Technology Ecosystem Review (STER), which Logan was commissioned to undertake by MSP Kate Forbes, it stated that “CodeClan should be treated as a strategic ecosystem asset.”
However, in today’s LinkedIn post, Logan stipulated that CodeClan’s business model had become “structurally unsustainable,” with client companies taking fewer graduates from the skills academy, resulting in falling revenues and loss-making over a period of time.
In terms of the question of financial support through public money, Logan wrote that “Public money can only be injected into a private business according to strict legal constraints and rules.
“If independent analysis concludes that such an injection will not alter the long-term course of a business in the context of its forward plans, then it cannot be done.”
Logan also noted that the strategic need for Scotland to have a channel where people can retrain as software engineers or data analysts has not gone away, and Scotland must re-establish that channel “in a way that is sustainable and fully relevant to current industry needs.”
Opening offices in both Sheffield and Leeds, the Yorkshire hub will serve as a second base for investment activity, providing greater funding and scaling opportunities for emerging tech startups and scaleups in the North of England.
The strategic base follows the VC firm’s recent investment in businesses across the North of England, such as Re:course AI, a conversational artificial intelligence (AI) learning and assessment platform for healthcare professionals, and Fuuse, a flexible back office system for EV chargers, among other companies.
Giles Moore, a serial entrepreneur from Sheffield, will lead the expansion as Par Equity’s regional development manager. Giles himself has launched and scaled numerous companies in Yorkshire.
Par Equity, which was founded in 2008 by a group of serial entrepreneurs and technologists — Paul Munn, Robert Higginson, Paul Atkinson, and Andrew Castell — focuses its investments on high-growth potential tech businesses in the North of the UK, and particularly companies in the HealthTech, ClimateTech, and IndustrialTech sectors.
As it stands, the VC firm has invested almost £160 million into around 77 early-stage companies since its inception.
Speaking on the expansion into Yorkshire, Giles commented: “Having been involved in Yorkshire startups and scaleups for over a decade, I have seen, first hand, all the challenges this region faces, in addition to the opportunities and developments that have arisen over that time.
“In this region, we don’t shout about our successes and therefore can go unnoticed to the outside world. This, however, is a very exciting period for the region. It is still underserved from a funding perspective, which is where I believe Par Equity can make a big impact.”
In Scotland, Par Equity is a major player in the nation’s tech venture capital landscape, investing in innovative companies that are making waves both in Scotland and beyond. These include the likes of DirectID, Skylark Lasers, Speech Graphics, and more.
Further, just a month prior, DIGIT exclusively revealed that Par Equity had gained B Corp status — the globally-recognised, well-regarded standard for companies relating to aspects like sustainability and social responsibility.
Amid the UK Government’s estimation that there have been 2.39 million instances of cyber-crime across all UK businesses from April 2022 to April 2023, Indusface surveyed over 2,200 respondents across 16 different industries to gauge each sector’s commitment to cybersecurity training.
Specifically, the survey uncovered that accommodation and food is the sector investing in cybersecurity training the least, with 75% of respondents saying their company doesn’t actively invest in cybersecurity training. Notably, 67% of respondents within this sector highlighted that their business has experienced a cyber-attack.
Ranking in second place is the education sector, with 69% of respondents working in this area saying that cybersecurity training isn’t being actively invested in. Regarding the question of “Has your business ever experienced a cyber-attack?,” 78% of respondents whose work is based in education said yes, the highest response from all the sectors surveyed.
Jointly ranking in second place alongside the education sector is transport, with 69% saying their company doesn’t actively invest in cybersecurity training.
Following the transport and education sectors is retail and wholesale at 53%, arts and entertainment at 31%, admin and support at 26%, professional and technical services at 26%, IT and communications at 25%, public sector and defence at 20%, and financial services at 16%.
On the flip side — when it comes to the sectors most investing in cybersecurity training — the utilities industry leads with 96% of respondents in this sector saying their company does actively invest in cybersecurity training, then construction at 94%, manufacturing at 92%, real estate at 91%, and health and social care at 90%.
The survey also highlighted, perhaps unsurprisingly, that email hacking is the most prevalent form of attack. However, “the way it is carried out is very versatile,” noted Indusface founder Venky Sundar, citing phishing, bot attacks such as credential stuffing, and the exploitation of SQL injection vulnerabilities.
The aforementioned estimation of 2.39 million instances of cyber-crime among UK businesses between April 2022 and 2023 comes from the UK Government’s Cyber security breaches survey 2023 report, published in April of this year.
The report outlined that 32% of UK businesses and 24% of charities recall cyber breaches or attacks between those twelve months. Somewhat positively, this is a decrease from 39% of businesses and 30% of charities who recalled an attack in the year previous.
Further, the report’s authors estimated the average (mean) annual cost of cyber-crime for businesses to be approximately £15,300 per victim.
Businesses should stop using harmful web designs and practices that encourage users to hand over more of their personal data than they’d like to, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) have urged.
In a joint paper published today, the two regulatory bodies have called for all businesses, developers, and designers to cease using web design practices that undermine people’s control of their personal information.
Harmful design practices include overly complicated privacy controls or, on the other hand, bundling privacy choices together in a manner that pushes users to share more data than they would wish to.
Highlighted as a particularly common example of harmful design is the lack of consumer controls over cookies, not least as cookie policy choices can impact users — and their wellbeing — in the medium- and longer-term.
“Some of these design practices are so subtle and have gone on for so long, you wouldn’t even realise you’re handing over your personal information until it’s too late – and it’s possible these techniques are embedded into thousands of websites across the UK,” commented Stephen Almond, the executive director of regulatory risk at the ICO.
“These website design tricks can have real and negative impacts on consumers’ lives. For example, if someone is recovering from a gambling problem, being steered to ‘accept all’ cookies can mean being continually bombarded with betting adverts, which could be incredibly harmful.
“We want to make consumers aware of these potentially harmful techniques to help them protect their data online – and, if necessary, make informed choices about which websites they choose to frequent.
“Businesses should take note that if they deliberately and persistently choose to design their websites in an unfair and dishonest way, the ICO will not hesitate to take necessary enforcement action.”
As Almond touched on, action will be taken by the ICO if improvements aren’t made on this front. In particular, it will be assessing cookie banners of the UK’s most frequently used websites.
Similarly, the CMA is set to continue to tackle issues caused by harmful design through consumer and competition enforcement powers.
In the joint paper, the regulators stipulated ways to support good online choice architecture, suggesting that companies should put the users at the heart of design choices, use design that empowers user choice and control, test and trial design choices, and comply with data protection, consumer, and competition law.
Relatedly, in September of last year, the ICO published the results of its 2022 Public Awareness Survey.
The survey uncovered that while 90% of people are concerned about their personal data being used without their permission, many also don’t know about their legal rights around data storage and usage by companies.
For instance, 31% didn’t know it was a legal right to be informed of when an organisation is collecting and/or using your personal data, while 26% didn’t know that the right to ask a company to delete the personal information it holds about you is protected by law.
Further, 50% aren’t happy about their data being used to show them adverts that they may be interested in, 80% of people either don’t mind or are happy for their data to be used for “social good” purposes, including research done for the public good.
When it comes to the public’s confidence that companies are abiding by laws and regulations to protect people’s data, 7% said they were very confident, 39% were fairly confident, 22% were not particularly confident, 6% were not at all confident, and 26% were neither confident nor unconfident.
The UK Space Agency has announced the recipients to receive funding from the first phase of the £20 million International Bilateral Fund, helping UK organisations collaborate with global partners to further space research and develop innovative space-oriented technologies.
The International Bilateral Fund is the first dedicated fund from the UK Space Agency — the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT) sponsored executive body — to solidify global ties and help meet the UK’s space goals.
In this first phase of the fund, the recipients will each receive up to £75,000 of the initial £2.1 million pot. The funding is set to enable work on projects such as the development of an autonomous controlled environment for plant growth to support space missions, and using superconductors for space traffic control.
The government has said that the partnerships will “ensure the UK, and its world-leading scientists, remain a driving force behind generating a diverse and collaborative global space sector that benefits the world for generations to come,” as well as strengthening UK space sector capabilities.
In terms of winners closer to home, two Scottish universities have been named by the UK Space Agency as recipients of the funding.
The University of Glasgow is partnering with the Australian Remote Operations for Space and Earth Consortium to develop a novel approach to lunar regolith sampling. Regolith is the layer of loose, unconsolidated rock and dust that sits upon the bedrock of a planet — in this case, the moon.
Meanwhile, the University of Strathclyde is partnering with MIT, the University of Arizona, the University of Waterloo, and Columbiad Launch Services Inc to work on a project relating to artificial intelligence (AI) for space safety and sustainability.
Speaking on the fund and this first wave of recipients, Dr Paul Bate, Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency, commented: “Working with other space agencies and organisations across the globe through our International Bilateral Fund allows us to draw on skills that enhance our homegrown expertise and capabilities, drive up investment in the UK, and support world-class science and discovery.
“Projects such as these highlight the many ways in which we can collaborate with the global space community to help humanity push the boundaries of space innovation and unlock commercial opportunities that will benefit our economy now and in the future.”
The news comes just two months after the UK Space Agency announced £6.6 million in funding for a variety of international space-focused partnerships through its Science and Exploration Bilateral Programme, helping to support space research and problem-solving.
While the UK Space Agency provides funding across various and intersecting aspects of the space industry, Greg Clark, chair of Parliament’s Science and Technology Select Committee, reportedly told MPs earlier this year that the UK is seen as “toxic” when it comes to privately funded satellite launches, following January’s failed Virgin Orbit satellite mission in Cornwall.
In Scotland, and in a bid to advance the UK’s satellite launch sector, two spaceports — Orbex’s Sutherland Spaceport and the SaxaVord Spaceport — are currently being built and are set to support vertical satellite rocket launches.
DIGIT recently reported on the news that Orbex has expanded its facilities ahead of the launch of its Prime rocket — a two-stage rocket designed to transport and release small satellites weighing up to 180kg.
Established in 2015, CodeClan offered both full- and part-time courses centred around coding and data analysis. The academy served as a major pipeline of new talent into Scottish technology companies as well firms located further afield.
Last Friday, the organisation’s webpage was updated to inform the public that it had gone into liqudation, ceased all operations, and that all staff were made redundant. With no staff, the paying students are unable to continue their studies.
Stuart Ure from Edinburgh, who used all his savings to enrol in CodeClan’s Professional Software Development course, has now launched a crowdfunding campaign so instructors can be paid to help the students finish their bootcamps.
On the JustGiving page, Ure wrote: “I have struggled to find my way career-wise as an adult, gaining experience in multiple sectors but still moving from low paid job to low paid job, unfulfilled but knowing I was capable and willing; I wanted more for myself.
“I left my job, a scary thing to do at 34 years old, and put all my savings into the CodeClan Professional Software Development course; a long term investment into my future. I felt confident that CodeClan was the right company for me to learn with – Scotland-wide, government-backed, designed to fill a skills shortage; a good bet on all counts.”
However, “On Thursday, the day before the news broke, we presented our first projects, and as we walked to the pub afterwards to celebrate, the air was full of excitement and promise. Little did we know, this would all come crashing down on us less than 24 hours later.”
Ure urged that the campaign — which at the time of writing has amassed nearly £17,000 of its £50,000 target — is not to help students recoup their money, but rather to pay instructors for their time to help seven separate cohorts of students upskill and complete their courses.
“Please help these cohorts finish their 16 week bootcamps. We took a risk, we put everything into our learning with the promise of a better life in the future. I do believe that opportunity is still there, but we do need to be able to finish the course. Please help us do this,” Ure wrote.
The Scottish Government: Any Support for CodeClan?
The news that CodeClan was entering administration rocked the Scottish tech sector over the weekend, with many people across social media sharing both their shock and support, as well as their positive experiences either at CodeClan themselves or with its graduates.
Some also questioned whether the Scottish Government could step in to keep the academy afloat. Just over a year ago, it was announced that the Scottish Government was awarding a £42 million contract to CodeBase — the neighbour of CodeClan — to establish several tech scale-up hubs across Scotland.
Ceri Shaw, who was CodeClan’s CPO, responded to such queries in a LinkedIn post. They wrote: “I wanted to quickly address a few of the comments I’ve seen along the lines of ‘surely the Scottish Government would have stepped in’. The CodeClan executive team was in touch with the Scottish Government and Scottish Enterprise about financial support for CodeClan since the beginning of the year and many occasions since. For whatever reason, they were unable or unwilling to offer financial support when it came down to it, despite positive indications up to that point.”
UPDATE: A Scottish Government spokesperson provided a comment to DIGIT on Monday evening, saying: “Codeclan has for many years played a valuable role in Scotland’s tech scene, and this development is deeply regrettable.
“The Scottish Government and Scottish Enterprise worked intensively with CodeClan, including employing independent financial consultants, to explore every possible option to help the organisation secure a sustainable future.
“Through the PACE programme, Skills Development Scotland is already making arrangements to support staff during this extremely difficult time. We are also working closely with the liquidator and other interested parties to develop solutions for impacted students.”
Sysdig’s threat research team — who’ve worked for or presented to significant bodies such as the U.S. National Security Agency — explored cloud attacks against industry verticals for the company’s latest publication, the 2023 Global Cloud Threat Report.
Specifically, regarding the headline statistic that the current average time for a threat actor to launch a targeted cloud attack is ten minutes, five of those minutes are dwell time. The authors point to the weaponisation of automation as what’s hastening attack speed.
While it inevitably varies depending on motive and visibility, threat actors need only hours to find and determine a worthy target, the report indicated.
When it comes to more opportunistic attacks, meanwhile, it’s been found to take on average under two minutes to find a publicly exposed credential, and then 21 minutes from credential discovery to the initiation of an attack.
Because identity and access management (IAM) is a crucial cloud security control, attackers are focusing on evolving their techniques for credential access, privilege escalation, and lateral movement, the Sysdig threat security team warned.
Relatedly, earlier this week DIGIT reported on a separate piece of research from Qualys which highlighted that IAM controls had key misconfigurations by users of the big three cloud service provider (CSP) environments.
For instance, regarding IAM in Amazon Web Services (AWS), multi-factor authentication (MFA) was not enabled for 44% of IAM users with console passwords. Further, IAM Access Analyzer wasn’t enabled in 96% of the accounts scanned by Qualys.
Further, IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach report from 2021 found that cloud misconfigurations account for 15% of initial attack vectors in security breaches, making it the third most common initial attack vector.
But where are cloud attack efforts being directed, exactly? Sysdig’s threat research team underscored that the primary targets for cloud attacks, rather expectedly, were telecommunications and finance institutions: 65% of cloud attacks target these two areas.
Interestingly, the authors noted that they “did not expect the low levels of interest in defense and health care, considering the data that could be stolen from those organizations.” Statistically-speaking, 5% of cloud attacks target health care companies, while just 1% target organisations in the defence sector.
One potential theory for the lower attack rate for health care and defence is that “cloud hackers stick to what they know, like selling online banking info for $35 each or merchant payment accounts for $1,000+.”
Time and time again, Edinburgh is cited as a prime hub for startups. In fact, it often feels that a business quarter doesn’t go by without being reminded of the Scottish capital’s both growing and continued success on this front.
For instance, and perhaps most illustratively, business data company Beauhurst noted earlier this year that Edinburgh is the top UK location for startups outside London, and that 12.3% of all startups based in the Scottish capital fall in the three popular categories of artificial intelligence, digital security, and fintech.
While the above three sectors are certainly attracting inventive ideas and talent, innovative Edinburgh-based startups can be found across the whole breadth of tech, from cybersecurity to cloud, telecoms to IoT, and data to robotics — and everything else in between.
One particular aspect that’s helping to drive innovation across such sectors is the fact that Edinburgh is a leading attraction for university spinout companies. As it stands, Edinburgh is home to around 80 spinouts, largely from local institutions such as the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University.
Speaking of which, Edinburgh’s universities also offer an impressive array of entrepreneur-related initiatives and programmes to both students and non-students alike, including the University of Edinburgh’s AI Accelerator and Venture Builder Incubator programmes, and Heriot-Watt’s Global Incubator, among others.
Considering the capital city’s wealth of new and emerging tech startups — from the university spinouts to the firms whose founders are purely bootstrapping their way to success, and the countless other startup variations — DIGIT wanted to spotlight a handful of especially interesting ones that are on our radar.
Nine of Edinburgh’s most interesting tech startups in 2023
Without further ado, let’s take a look at some of the most interesting tech startups in Edinburgh in 2023.
1. Bioliberty
Founded in 2020, Bioliberty is a biotech startup developing rehabilitation solutions for degenerative and traumatic conditions.
The company is currently working on a robotic glove, tailored towards people who’ve lost upper limb mobility and movement, particularly stroke patients. The glove is being built to aid with the opening and closing strength of the hand, and to also report important metrics concerning the patient’s rehabilitative progress.
In the first half of 2023, Bioliberty secured £2.2 million to help fund the glove’s development. The funding round was led by Edinburgh-based business angel syndicate Archangels, with additional participation from the University of Edinburgh’s Old College Capital, St. Andrews-based Eos Advisory, and Hanna Capital SEZC.
Co-founded by Yiqiang Zhao and Dr. Shashwat Ganguly, Looper is life cycle assessment software that’s being developed to help architects, manufacturers, and consultants measure the climate impact of products and projects.
After quantifying and visualising the carbon impact of construction projects, users can then strategise ways on how to go about reducing their carbon footprint, such as making changes in their product sourcing and strategies.
The company recently participated in the latest CivTech Demo Day at Edinburgh’s Roxy Assembly Rooms, where the co-founders presented the solution to an eager crowd wanting to know more about the ideas coming out of Edinburgh’s tech scene to help solve significant environment-related issues.
Another Edinburgh tech startup helping businesses to reduce carbon is Bennu.ai. Founded in 2021, the firm has developed a smart waste bin that sorts waste automatically as we collectively move towards a net-zero economy.
The smart bin, dubbed “Janus,” uses cutting-edge sensors that’ve been developed in-house to sort general waste, helping to ensure that what’s recyclable can be recycled.
Around this time last year, the startup’s founder, Jonathan Feldstein — who’s undertaking a PhD in neuro-symbolic AI at the University of Edinburgh — won the Growth Innovation Award at the Inspire Launch Grow Awards ceremony, which celebrated the ambition and accomplishments of the university’s entrepreneurs. The Growth Innovation Award aims to recognise companies with the potential for high-growth.
At the intersection of technology and whisky — that major Scottish export — is Bevvy.
Bevvy is a whisky discovery platform and marketplace. Via its iOS and Androids apps, mobile phone cameras can scan and identify bottles of whisky. The whisky is then profiled with content relating to tasting notes, distillery history, cask number, bottle numbers, and rarity scores.
The company was co-founded by Laurie Black and Luke Heron in 2021. According to the founders, they’re seeing tens and tens of thousands of user scans on a monthly basis. It’s also been recently announced that Bevvy has become Hibernian FC’s new front of shirt sponsor and principal partner.
Thomas Cartwright and Marise Treseder are the co-founders of DeepQA, a tool which utilises AI to automate software testing, thereby helping companies to focus developer resources on more complex, knotty problems.
The pair both studied artificial intelligence at Masters level at the University of Edinburgh.
A few months ago, the co-founders pitched their product at the Venture Builder Incubator Showcase at the Scottish National Gallery. The showcase was for the latest cohort of the University of Edinburgh-run incubator, which helps founders to drive their data-driven ideas forward.
As a result of the showcase, DeepQA won the Judge’s Choice Award.
Founded in 2021, Nova Finance is a non-custodial programmable asset protocol that’s being built for decentralised finance, or DeFi.
The aim of the Nova platform is to help users develop investment portfolios while automating traditionally complex investor and yield strategies.
“Fundamentally, Nova Finance is about making really complex financial skills accessible to anyone,” said Tom Sichel, one of the crypto startup’s co-founders, in a DIGIT feature article published September last year.
The startup secured $3 million (£2.3m~) in funding for their idea in 2021.
As Sichel mentioned to DIGIT, “We’re in a very bearish world where it’s quite difficult to raise capital, and a lot of people are being more cautious in the crypto space. However, with our investment in place we are working on our own road map.”
Firestoke Games is a publisher of indie PC and console games, and with its titles it aims to “spark joy, surprise, and delight in a global audience of players.”
An example of an upcoming title to be published by Firestoke is Moonloop Games’ Hauntii, an adventure game built around a haunting mechanic that lets players possess the environment and its creatures.
PolyCrunch Games’ Falling Out, a 2D roguelite adventure where players take control of two unexpected adventurers and explore ancient kingdoms and discover treasures, is an example of one of Firestoke’s already-published titles.
In 2022, the Scottish Games Network reported that the publisher had secured $2.2 million (£1.7m~) in funding, led by Hiro Capital.
As a regtech — regulatory technology — startup, Stickler’s aim is to bring managed documentation, testing, and regulatory assurance to the investment platform industry, providing a unifying map of rules and dependencies.
The startup, which was founded in 2020 by Mike Stevens — who has worked in the platform business for over 18 years — boasts a team of over 10 employees.
“Our home is Edinburgh, and we strongly believe the local market can provide us with a depth of talent, experience and passion that rivals any other location in the UK,” stated the startup on the FinTech Scotland website.
Concluding the nine-strong list is Swurf, a venue sourcing app for remote workers looking for welcoming venues to work freely in. It was founded by Nikki Gibson in 2021.
Swurf — which is free for users — was first launched in Edinburgh, but has since expanded to Leeds. The venues include ‘casual’ spaces, i.e. bars, cafes, and community spaces, as well as ‘professional’ spaces, e.g. a co-working space or dedicated hot desk area.
In 2022, Gareth Williams, the co-founder of Edinburgh tech unicorn Skyscanner, as well as Anna Lagerqvist Christopherson, the co-owner of Edinburgh-based Boda Bars, both pledged an undisclosed sum to support Swurf’s growth.
How has an “interesting” Edinburgh tech “startup” been defined?
What constitutes as a startup or not is, and perhaps always will be, up for debate. But for the purposes of this article, a startup has been classified as a company that has existed for no longer than three to four or so years, and is therefore new and emerging.
Further, in this instance, a startup has been defined as a company that doesn’t exceed a revenue run rate of $50 million, doesn’t have over 100 employees, and doesn’t have a valuation of $500 million or more, corresponding with the 50-100-500 rule created by Techcrunch’s Editor-in-Chief, Alex Wilhelm.
Lastly, concerning the “interesting” part for this article’s selection formula, we aimed to pull novel and/or exciting ideas from across a diverse range of tech sectors, but it isn’t — and shouldn’t be taken as — an exhaustive list.
Which new, interesting Edinburgh tech companies are on your radar?
If there’s a particular startup that you’d like to champion — and think would be at home in a list like this — feel free to let us know via LinkedIn, Twitter, or by email via the editor@digit.fyi address.
OpenAI — the company whose chatbot, ChatGPT, sparked the recent global interest in and usage of generative artificial intelligence — has filed a trademark application for “GPT-5” with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
Underpinning ChatGPT is the GPT itself — the generative pre-trained transformer, a type of large language model created by OpenAI. The most recent and publicly available version is GPT-4.
An application for the GPT-5 mark was filed by the AI company in the latter half of last July. The filing highlights that it’s in relation to “computer software for using language models.”
The filing for GPT-5 also details natural language processing, understanding, analysis, and generation, and the developing, running, and analysing of algorithms that are able to learn to analyse, classify, and take actions in response to exposure to data, among other expected features.
One particularly interesting mention in the filing is the artificial production of human speech and text. While this was also specified in the trademark application for GPT-4, it indicates that ChatGPT may have verbal capacity in the future.
Despite OpenAI’s most recent USPTO filing, it doesn’t confirm whether notable internal work is yet being done or not on GPT-5, or if it even exists yet.
In April, The Vergereported that Sam Altman, the AI company’s chief executive and co-founder, said at an MIT event that OpenAI wasn’t training GPT-5 and also wouldn’t be for some time. This was stated just a month after the release of GPT-4, which came out on March 14.
The GPT-5 application has been filed under a “1B” basis though, meaning that the mark hasn’t yet been used in commerce but the applicant has an intent to use the mark in commerce. Companies often file trademarks or patents for concepts that haven’t yet gotten to the development stage to stay a step ahead of competitors while also protecting their intellectual property.
Ultimately, due to the lack of official information from OpenAI, it’s unclear what stage the AI company is currently at with GPT-5, and what both the tech world and world at large could eventually expect from the model.
Relatedly, last month, amid reports of GPT-4 users complaining about degraded performance — from weakened logic to instructions not being properly followed — OpenAI said in a blog post update that “While the majority of metrics have improved, there may be some tasks where the performance gets worse.”
According to preliminary analysis from a study being undertaken in Sweden, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in breast cancer screening has been indicated to be “safe” and could significantly reduce radiologists’ workloads.
The study, which is still ongoing, is being undertaken to assess the clinical safety of an AI-supported screen-reading protocol compared with standard screen reading by radiologists following mammograms — X-rays of the breast.
Previous studies looking at whether AI can help to accurately diagnose breast cancer in mammograms were carried out retrospectively, assessing scans that had already been looked at by radiologists.
However, interim results of this latest study have been published by the group of researchers in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet, with the lead author being Kristina Lång at Lund University.
The researchers held a randomised, controlled trial involving roughly 80,000 women from Sweden with a median age of 54-years-old. Around half (40,024) of the participants’ mammograms were assessed by two radiologists, while the other half (39, 996) were assessed by the AI-supported tool followed by interpretation by radiologists.
In total, 244 women from AI-supported screening were found to have breast cancer, while 203 women from standard screening were found to have cancer, suggesting that AI-aided detection can identify cancer at a “similar rate” to two radiologists.
Additionally, the trial found that the workload for the radiologists working as part of the AI-supported group was reduced by 44%, seeing as only one radiologist was needed as opposed to the normal two required for double reading.
While “The greatest potential of AI right now is that it could allow radiologists to be less burdened by the excessive amount of reading,” Lång also said that the initial results “are not enough on their own to confirm that AI is ready to be implemented in mammography screening,” according to The Guardian.
Further, Lång said that “The study was conducted on a single site in a Swedish setting. We need to see whether these promising results hold up under other conditions, for example with other radiologists or other AI algorithms. There may be other ways to use AI in mammography screening, but these should preferably also need to be investigated in a prospective setting.”
According to a new report from security solutions firm Qualys, controls within Google Cloud Platform (GCP) are the most misconfigured by users of the big three cloud service provider (CSP) environments, thereby increasing susceptibility to security risks.
This is just one of the many findings highlighted in the Qualys Threat Research Unit’s recently published TotalCloud Security Insights report. The research utilises anonymised data from global cloud scans.
“Configurations” refer to control settings applied to both software and hardware aspects within a cloud environment. While the platforms themselves aren’t intrinsically insecure, the misconfiguration of controls by users can magnify security risk.
Misconfiguration can be caused by myriad reasons: from the complexity of cloud environments to a lack of expertise with evolving technologies, human error leading to insecure settings and permissions, or rapid deployment that compromises the implementation of security measures.
When looking at cloud misconfiguration issues in the three major CSPs, the researchers found that Google Cloud Platform was in the lead with an average failure rate of 60% when measured against Centre for Internet Security (CIS) Benchmarks. The CIS Benchmarks are a set of configuration guidelines and recommendations provided to help protect systems against cyber threats.
However, Azure wasn’t far behind the GCP misconfiguration rates with an average failure rate of 57%. The last of the big three, AWS, had an average failure rate of 34%.
Further, the misconfiguration of controls in GCP services that most failed against CIS Benchmarks was DataProc, BigQuery, and Logging, according to the research.
Encryption, identity and access management (IAM), and external-facing assets were highlighted as key misconfigurations across all clouds.
For instance, when it comes to encryption, 99% of the disks in Azure are either not encrypted or are not using a customer-managed key (CMK), despite the report noting that enabling encryption is usually as simple as selecting a checkbox within the configuration settings.
Meanwhile, regarding IAM in AWS, multi-factor authentication (MFA) is not enabled for 44% of IAM users with console passwords. Further, IAM Access Analyzer is not enabled in 96% of the accounts scanned by Qualys.
The report also underscored that a common misconfiguration by users of all three major cloud providers is inadvertently leaving data publicly accessible. For example, the research team found that 31% of S3 buckets are publicly accessible, which exposes them to a variety of potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
The deal will supply Archangels — which was formed in 1992 and invests in early-stage Scottish life sciences and technology companies — with additional funding to put towards the next generation of Scots entrepreneurs innovating within these sectors.
The capital from British Business Investments, the commercial subsidiary of the British Business Bank, is set to be deployed alongside syndicate funding across all of the firm’s investment activity.
British Business Investments’ Regional Angels Programme was launched in a move to help reduce regional imbalances in access to early stage equity funding for smaller businesses across the UK, and to increase the aggregate amount of early stage equity capital available.
Since its inception, the Regional Angels Programme has purportedly committed around £197m to support regional investment.
Speaking on the £12m deal with British Business Investments, David Ovens, joint managing director at Archangels, said: “The co-investment agreement from British Business Investments means that, in a challenging global market, Archangels will have access to significant levels of aligned co-investment capital.
“This additional funding will allow us to support current and future portfolio companies to grow their businesses and provide returns for both our investors and the broader Scottish economy.
“We are in advanced discussions with a number of exciting new companies, and we anticipate seeing these deals coming to fruition over the coming months.”
Judith Hartley, chief executive at British Business Investments, also commented: “The Regional Angels Programme plays a vital role in developing the early-stage funding ecosystem across the UK Nations and Regions, bringing together finance, business experience and skills to support the development of high-growth smaller businesses.
“By investing alongside Archangels’ syndicate, this £12m co-investment agreement from British Business Investments will support early-stage life sciences and technology companies across Scotland.”
While on the subject of regional investment, last week a new report from the Treasury Committee highlighted that the UK’s venture capital-focused tax relief schemes having a seven-to-10 year business “age limit” is disadvantageous to startups in regions outside of the “Golden Triangle.”
From April 2020 to April 2022, 26 members of staff at NHS Lanarkshire had access to a WhatsApp group where patient data — such as names, phone numbers, and addresses — was shared on over 500 occasions. Screenshots, images, and videos which included clinical information were also shared.
On one occasion, a non-staff member was added to the group by mistake, resulting in the disclosure of patient data to an unauthorised individual.
After becoming aware of the incident, NHS Lanarkshire reported themselves to the ICO. The body’s investigation then concluded that NHS Lanarkshire did not have the appropriate policies, guidance, or processes in place.
As an emergency measure at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the health board enabled WhatsApp to be downloaded for specific administrative purposes and crisis planning.
On this, Information Commissioner John Edwards, said on BBC’s Good Morning Scotland radio programme: “They did that at pace and we can’t particularly criticise them for that. But what they did not do is follow up with rules about the way in which WhatsApp could be used, and the use of it drifted with the members sharing very sensitive information for which the app was not authorised.”
Edwards mentioned that while there was “no suggestion that the data was misused, [or] that anybody acted unprofessionally with it,” it “did expose the data to risk,” and that the message for other health boards is to “really consider a risk assessment when deploying new technologies and new communications platforms.”
The Information Commissioner went on to say that “One of the other things that this case shows us is that staff were being innovative themselves: they were in some cases sharing images that could be used for clinical purposes. That tells us that there’s a demand for secure image sharing services and we’ve recommended that the Lanarkshire board look at that.”
The ICO has provided NHS Lanarkshire with a set of actions to undertake to ensure their compliance with data protection law. The ICO has asked NHS Lanarkshire to provide an update of the actions taken within six months of the reprimand being issued.
No financial penalty was made against NHS Lanarkshire.
After sending an email to 37 recipients likely to be accessing HIV services, an email error — inadvertently using CC (carbon copy) instead of BCC (blind carbon copy) — had meant that the recipients could see other peoples’ personal email addresses.
The daily inter-island mail distribution service, which will go via Stromness to Graemsay and Hoy, will see letters and parcels delivered to postal workers via drone. The staff will then make their usual island delivery routes.
I-Port will operate for an initial three month period, with the intent to extend in the future. It’s the first UK drone delivery service that can be conducted on a permanent basis in line with existing regulatory frameworks.
Skyports Drone Services will conduct their inter-island flights with the Speedbird Aero DLV-2 aircraft — an electric, multirotor drone which has a payload capacity of 6kg and a range of up to 16km.
The I-Port is one of the nine winning projects of the Freight Innovation Fund Accelerator programme, which is backed by the Department for Transport (DfT). Skyports received £150,000 of grant funding to test operations.
The service is expected to significantly improve service levels and delivery times for rural communities, considering that Orkney’s geography and weather can impact delivery schedules. Poor weather conditions commonly disrupt ferries, by which some mail is transported on.
Commenting on the service, Chris Paxton, Head of Drone Trials at Royal Mail, said: “We are proud to be working with Skyports to deliver via drone to some of the more remote communities that we serve in the UK.
“Using a fully electric drone supports Royal Mail’s continued drive to reduce emissions associated with our operations, whilst connecting the island communities we deliver to.”
Alex Brown, Director, Skyports Drone Services, also commented: “By leveraging drone technology, we are revolutionising mail services in remote communities, providing more efficient and timely delivery, and helping to reduce the requirement for emissions-producing vehicles.
“We’re pleased to once again be partnering with Royal Mail to demonstrate how drone operations can benefit UK logistics on this project. The I-Port project also marks an exciting milestone as it is the first operation we are completing with aircraft partner Speedbird.”
In recent years, the Scottish archipelago hasn’t been a stranger to testing, trialling, and utilising new technology when it comes to deliveries to its rural locations and communities.
In 2021, DIGIT reported on the news that Royal Mail had trialled scheduled, autonomous delivery flights between Kirkwall North Ronaldsay with a large, twin-engine Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle (UAV).
The latest initiative, the Orkney I-Port project, was first announced earlier this year.
Glasgow-based Allied Vehicles Group, the manufacturer and supplier of wheelchair accessible vehicles (WAVs), has been awarded a grant worth £1.3 million from Scottish Enterprise to help drive forward a project to adapt sustainable vehicles for wheelchair users.
The £1.3 million goes towards Allied’s research and development (R&D) of a new vehicle conversion process for hybrid and electric vehicles (EVs), helping to ensure that more disabled people can access and use sustainable cars as Scotland transitions towards net zero.
In addition to developing inclusive engineering solutions for the emerging plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles market, the project will also focus on the development of an electronics package for low-emissions taxis, such as those needed in Glasgow’s low emission zone.
Allied employs around 630 members of staff at its Possilpark site, and the new R&D project is set to create around 35 new jobs as the company enters the sustainable transport markets.
The company — which was established in 1993 — provides wheelchair accessible cars, taxis, minibuses, and people carriers across the UK and continental Europe, using its engineering capabilities to remanufacture vehicles from brands including Ford, Peugeot, Citroen, and Volkswagen.
Speaking on the funding and the R&D project, Peter Facenna, managing director of Allied Vehicles Group, said: “Engineering innovation and development are key to our plans to expand our UK and international business activity, by providing first class accessibility solutions for people with severely impaired mobility.
“The advent of hybrid and electric vehicles is great news for the environment but also poses particular challenges in terms of design and accessibility for disabled customers.
“Support from Scottish Enterprise is vital in helping us take forward research and development work required to address these new challenges. It is also key to furthering our growing exports throughout continental Europe.”
Further, Wellbeing Economy Secretary Neil Gray, who visited the Possilpark site on 27 June, commented: “Tackling inequality is a priority for the Scottish Government, and our accessible travel framework commits to ensuring all disabled people can travel with freedom, choice, dignity and opportunity. Our world-leading climate targets also include a commitment to building electric vehicle capacity and infrastructure.
“This latest innovative investment project brings together both aims – to ensure Scotland transitions to net zero, while we build a fair and equal society for everyone.”
An increasing number of cars are being foregone in favour of more sustainable alternatives, but the need for hybrid and electric cars to be widely inclusive and accessible is key.
In its recent report with the Energy Savings Trust, Motability — a charity with a mission to enhance the lives of disabled people with transportation solutions — found that the requirements of disabled consumers are not sufficiently considered in the production of mass-produced EVs.
Respondents to a corresponding wheelchair accessible vehicle (WAV) user survey raised their concerns over finding suitable EV models that meet their needs.
Issues such as heavier base vehicles potentially limiting the pool of available small- to medium-sized wheelchair accessible vehicles, and new technologies and autonomous features not considering disabled drivers’ adaptation needs were just two of the issues that the report highlighted.
Further, it pointed out that EV infrastructure needs to be addressed alongside vehicle design to improve overall accessibility. The scarcity of accessible chargepoints and issues with the built environment were referred to as some of the key barriers to disabled people using EVs.
“While we continue to make progress on the accessibility of public chargepoints, it’s clear from this research that further work is needed on vehicle design,” said Barry Le Grys, the chief executive officer of Motability.
“There is a risk that disabled people could lose the vital independence that having access to private transport brings if these issues are not addressed by 2030.”
OpenAI, the artificial intelligence (AI) company behind the ChatGPT chatbot, has quietly pulled its tool specifically designed to detect AI-written text due to its “low rate of accuracy” just months after it was made public.
The tool — known as a “classifier” — was launched in January this year to help with distinguishing between human-written text and text written by generative AI.
OpenAI explicitly stated in the tool’s original launch post that the classifier was “not fully reliable,” and that, in evaluations, the tool correctly identified 26% of AI-written text as “likely-AI written,” while incorrectly labelling human-written text as AI-written text 9% of the time.
Due to many issues — the tool was “very unreliable” on shorter (1,000 characters and fewer) texts, and it was “sometimes extremely confident in a wrong prediction” — the company warned its users to not use the classifier as a primary decision-making tool.
In a recent update, the firm wrote that the AI classifier is “no longer available due to its low rate of accuracy,” and that they’re “working to incorporate feedback and are currently researching more effective provenance techniques for text.”
OpenAI’s pulling of their own tool further highlights the difficulties in classifying what’s been created by generative artificial intelligence and what hasn’t amid the rapid surge in its usage.
In the field of education, the introduction of ChatGPT and similar tools has sparked fears over how it could be used by students, academics, and the like to cheat and plagiarise.
In a move to call attention to the believability of text written by generative AI, a group of academics submitted a paper earlier this year titled “Chatting and Cheating: Ensuring Academic Integrity in the Era of ChatGPT,”according to The Guardian. After peer review, the paper was published in an education journal; it was later revealed by the academics that the true “author” was ChatGPT.
As schools, universities, and other educational institutions across the globe turn to AI detection tools to thwart attempts at cheating and plagiarism, there are growing concerns over their reliability.
Last month, Rolling Stoneprofiled a University of California, Davis, student who was wrongfully accused of using generative artificial intelligence for a written assignment. The university had “early access” to the detection tool in question — the developer had noted it had “a small risk of false positives.”
“I think they just need to be more careful with how they approach it,” suggested the student.
The Cyber security skills in the UK labour market 2023 report found that 50% of businesses don’t have the staff to carry out basic tasks laid out in the National Cyber Security Centre’s Cyber Essentials scheme.
Specifically, these tasks include setting up configured firewalls, storing or transferring personal data, and detecting and removing malware.
Comparatively, in last year’s report, it was found that 51% of UK businesses had a basic cybersecurity skills gap.
The latest report also highlighted that around 33% of businesses have an advanced cybersecurity skills gap, lacking the ability to conduct forensic analysis of breaches, interpret malicious code, and undergo penetration testing.
Meanwhile, the demand for cybersecurity professionals has continued to increase year-on-year.
In the whole of 2022, there were around 160,000 related job postings — roughly 71,000 of which were across core cyber roles, and around 89,000 were other job postings which stipulated cybersecurity skills.
Compared to the figures for 2021, the demand for all roles which require a level of cybersecurity knowledge has increased by 30%, and core cybersecurity job postings increased by 33%.
Positively, the number of students graduating in cybersecurity courses has risen by 19% year-on-year, from roughly 3,700 to around 4,400.
This increase comes as a range of new cybersecurity skills programmes are offered and as existing programmes draw interest, not least the UK Government’s “Upskill in Cyber” programme, which has received a record number of applications in 2023.
In order to meet demand, the report suggests that approximately 13,500 new people are required each year, in addition to the around 4,700 people needed to replace those exiting the sector.
When it comes to the lack of women in cybersecurity, the government’s latest data shows that just 17% of the workforce are female, marking a 5% decrease from the figure of 22% stated in last year’s report. In the 2021 report, the figure was 16%, and in the 2020 report it was 15%.
“Although there were signs of an upward trend last year, this has not been sustained,” the most recent report stated.
The report also underscored that there’s less diversity in senior cybersecurity roles, with women accounting for 14% of those in senior roles. In the 2022 report the figure was 13%, and in the 2021 report it was 3%.
Professor Sean Ennis, an ex-OECD senior economist at the University of East Anglia’s Centre for Competition Policy, has been named as the person bringing the class action lawsuit on behalf of over 1,500 UK-based app developers because of Apple’s “excessive” charges.
The tech giant charges some app makers on the App Store 15% to 30% in commission on in-app sales. The practice has been routinely criticised, not least by Tesla CEO Elon Musk who said that “Apple’s store is like having a 30% tax on the Internet” and that it’s “10 times higher than it should be.”
According to Techcrunch, Geradin Partners — the law business supposedly advising Professor Ennis — Apple’s commission fee being non-uniformly applied will be a particular point of focus for the suit.
“Apple’s charges to app developers are excessive, and only possible due to its monopoly on the distribution of apps onto iPhones and iPads,” said Professor Ennis in a statement to Reuters.
“The charges are unfair in their own right, and constitute abusive pricing. They harm app developers and also app buyers.”
Further, Ennis told Techcrunch that he’s “really convinced that the type of behaviour we’re talking about in this case is deeply problematic. So I was interested in taking a role to help get some redress for those who I feel have been harmed by the behaviour.”
On its commission fees, Apple has previously said that it doesn’t collect commission from more than 85% of developers that specifically sell physical goods and services or distribute free or ad-supported apps, and that the iOS app economy has supported more than 440,000 jobs across the UK.
This reported lawsuit joins another UK claim made against Apple led by Dr Rachael Kent, a lecturer in digital economy and society education at King’s College London. Dr Kent filed the claim on behalf of 19.6 million UK consumers in 2021, alleging that Apple has breached competition law and overcharged for app purchases, seeking £1.5bn in compensation.
Dr Kent’s claim has been certified and is awaiting trial at the Competition Appeal Tribunal.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched its own investigation into Apple’s conduct in relation to the distribution of apps on iOS and iPadOS devices in the UK, particularly looking at the terms and conditions governing app developers’ access to the App Store.
According to a new Treasury Committee report, the UK’s venture capital-focused tax relief schemes having a seven-to-10 year business “age limit” is disadvantageous to startups in regions outside the “Golden Triangle.”
The recently published Venture Capital Report highlighted the uneven levels of venture capital (VC) investment across the UK, with the Golden Triangle — London, Oxford, and Cambridge — receiving around 80% of VC investment.
Further, the British Business Bank’s nations and regions tracker found that in 2021, London alone accounted for 66% of overall UK small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) equity investment, and 49% of deals.
The report underscored that VC-focused tax relief schemes — which includes the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS), the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS), and Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs) — are internationally competitive schemes that have had a positive impact on businesses in the UK.
For instance, VCTs encourage individuals to invest indirectly in smaller trading companies that are seeking to grow, with the VCTs being managed by fund managers who are usually part of larger investment groups.
However, and while the EIS and VCT schemes are available to businesses across the UK, both initiatives have certain qualifying conditions that must be met, including an “age limit” where firms must be no older than seven years from their first commercial sale, and 10 years for “knowledge intensive companies.”
As justification of the schemes’ age limits, the HMRC suggested that “the rules ensure that tax relief is targeted on investments in earlier-stage companies, companies that need several rounds of tax-advantaged funding before the market will invest in them.”
Dr. Mark Payton, the CEO of Mercia Asset Management, a regional-focused VC fund, told the Committee that as regional firms tend to take longer to grow due to lower available resources, the system is “disproportionately punishing” for regional businesses.
“Just get rid of the age cap—please just get rid of the age cap on businesses. It is really hamstringing the regional businesses, in particular,” he suggested.
Douglas Hansen-Luke, the Executive Chair of Future Planet Capital — a venture capital fund with regionally-focused investments — evidenced that “just last week we had a company in the midlands that had a partner walk away […] because they were seven years and half a month, we were not able to invest in them.”
In response, the report advocates for the UK Government to extend the seven and 10 year age limits for support through the EIS and VCT schemes, with a revised limit taking place from April 2025.
In addition to the inequality in VC funding allocation across the UK, the report also highlighted that the UK venture capital market is highly unrepresentative when it comes to gender and ethnicity.
The British Business Bank told the Committee that “For every £1 of equity investment in the UK in 2021, all-female founder teams received 2p, all-male founder teams received 84p, and mixed-gender teams 14p.”
As the report also referenced, the UK Business Angels Association’s data showed that only 15 to 18% of angel investors are women and only about 11% of the angel community are from ethnic minorities, showing a substantial gap on both sides of the market.
Among its recommendations, the Committee advised that all relevant organisations in the VC industry become signatories to diversity-boosting initiatives like the Women in Finance Charter and Investing in Women Code, if they have not done so already.
The San Francisco- and Berlin-based startup announced the international rollout of its technology and services in 35 cities across 20 countries in a bid to “be the world’s largest, most inclusive identity and financial public utility, owned by everyone.”
Central to the project is the firm’s digital identity protocol, World ID — an account only humans are able to receive. To be eligible for a World ID, users must undergo an in-person iris scan via its physical “Orb” to verify the person’s “uniqueness and humanness.” Once verified by the Orb, a World ID account is created for the user.
Alongside a World ID, verified users have access to World App, the protocol-compatible wallet, and the Worldcoin token (WLD), a cryptocurrency which is transactable on the blockchain and is “the first digital currency to be freely distributed to people for just being a unique human.”
“Through its unique technology, Worldcoin aims to provide anyone in the world, regardless of background, geography or income, access to the growing digital and global economy in a privacy preserving and decentralized way,” said Worldcoin co-founder and Tools for Humanity CEO Alex Blania.
According to Worldcoin, two million people have purportedly signed up for a World ID already, and more than 40,000 people a week have been verified as human over the last six months of the project’s beta phase. The number of Orbs available is planned to increase to 1,500 this summer, which “will more than 5x sign up capacity globally.”
The firm’s eyeball-scanning technology, which is developed by Blania’s Tools for Humanity — a company built to “ensure a more just economic system” — is a particularly interesting aspect of the project amid the rapid development of artificial intelligence, and the growing indecipherability of AI and robots from humans in the digital sphere.
“In the age of AI, the need for proof of personhood is no longer a topic of serious debate; instead, the critical question is whether or not the proof of personhood solutions we have can be privacy-first, decentralized and maximally inclusive,” said Blania.
In a statement, the company noted: “If successful, Worldcoin’s global decentralized identity and financial network could drastically increase economic opportunity, scale a reliable and privacy-preserving way to distinguish humans from AI online, enable global democratic processes and eventually show a potential path for AI-funded universal basic income (UBI).”
The official launch and international rollout of the project comes after more than three years of work. Earlier this year, in May, the firm raised $115 million (£89m~) in a Series C funding round, led by Blockchain Capital and including a16z, Bain Capital Crypto, and Distributed Global. In March 2022, the firm had a valuation of $3 billion (£2.3b~).
In a bid to support firms at the early stage of product development, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) — the financial regulatory body of the United Kingdom — is making its piloted digital sandbox permanent and more open from 1 August 2023.
Firms situated in sectors such as banking, investment, payments, insurance, wholesale, and more will be able to apply for access to the testing environment, where proof of concepts can be experimented with.
The sandbox has so far only been made temporarily available to those participating in pilot runs and the FCA’s TechSprints scheme.
With the digital sandbox, approved firms will have access to over 200 synthetic, public, or anonymised data sets and over 1,000 APIs to support the testing and validation of digital solutions.
The data available covers transactions and payments data, social media data, investment data, credit data, and data from Companies House.
The sandbox also has an “integrated development environment” to safeguard the data assets on the platform while experimentation gets underway.
As solutions are iterated on, the sandbox can help facilitate collaboration between teams, mentors, and observers. Measures include an “observation deck,” where the likes of regulators and incumbents can observe in-flight testing at a technical level.
The FCA stated that more than half of the SME participants in the pilots and TechSprints made “positive developments including launching new products, securing funding and partnerships, or receiving industry awards or recognitions.”
The process for participant approval is planned to take a maximum of four weeks, and applicants will be assessed against the criteria of scope, innovation, consumer benefit, readiness, and need for support.
In addition to innovators, the FCA also welcomes data providers to apply to list their data on the platform, thereby gaining traffic and insights on its usage.
Further information on what the FCA is looking for and how to apply will be provided at this link from 1 August.
The last time DIGIT previously reported on the FCA was last week, when the National Audit Office launched a review to assess the regulator’s readiness to manage a growing list of responsibilities, including the overseeing of the crypto sector and risks surrounding artificial intelligence.
Previous to that, on 13 July, DIGIT published a story on how Nikhil Rathi, the Chief Executive of the FCA, said that artificial intelligence could disrupt the financial services sector in “ways and at a scale not seen before,” and warned that the regulator would be forced to take action against AI-based fraud.
This year’s report and its findings are based on test results collected between October 2022 and March 2023 by Opensignal, the independent analytics company specialising in quantifying the mobile network experience.
Ofcom found that in terms of cellular network use, and perhaps unsurprisingly, most use was over 4G — mobile users were connected to a 4G network on average 88% of the time. Mobile users were only without cellular connection for around 1% of the time.
However, when people were actively using their phones in 5G-covered areas, data connections to the newer generation of the cellular technology succeeded 98.4% percent of the time, compared to 97.8% for 4G and 91.3% for 3G.
On average, and as the UK rollout of 5G continues, 5G users spent 10.1% of the time connected to a 5G network, 84.3% of the time connected to a 4G network, and a further 4.2% of the time on 3G. 5G users were without a cellular connection 0.8% of the time.
Mobile users spent 6% of the time connected to 3G while the eventual switching off of operators’ 3G networks draws ever closer. EE has said that it’s switching off its 3G network in January 2024, for example.
When it comes to mobile download speeds, download times were much shorter on 5G compared to 4G and 3G, as expected. A 2MB file took on average twice as long to download on a 4G network compared to 5G, and on a 3G network it took more than four times longer than on 4G.
The benefits of 5G’s speed, though, became even more apparent when downloading larger files. On average, the download of a 5MB file was 54% shorter than over 4G.
Regarding how things differ between mobile network operators (MNOs), while there were no differences between the average success rates of 5G and 4G data connections, EE customers spent the highest proportion of time connected to 4G (91%).
EE’s average response times, or latency, were also the fastest among the MNOs for 5G (18ms), 4G (18ms), and 3G (29ms). Further, EE users had the fastest upload speeds for 4G (9Mbit/s) and 3G (3Mbit/s), and were joint-first with Three for 5G (17Mbit/s).
O2 customers, however, experienced the slowest average download speeds over 5G and 4G networks (74Mbit/s and 19Mbit/s respectively), and also the slowest average 5G and 4G upload speeds (10Mbit/s and 5Mbit/s).
Ofcom’s report also highlighted some interesting geographical differences when it comes to file download speeds, not least that Scotland had the shortest time to download a 2MB file over 3G, while Northern Ireland and Wales had the longest times.
83% of UK critical national infrastructure (CNI) firms believe that newly implemented sustainable technologies will become a significant cyber-attack vector in the next five years, as new sustainable tech and solutions are adopted amid the drive towards net zero.
This is one of the many insights gleaned from cybersecurity and managed services company Bridewell. Its latest report, Security and Sustainability Across Critical National Infrastructure: 2023, surveyed 500 people responsible for cybersecurity in UK CNI companies.
While, overall, more than eight in ten of security decision-makers agree that newly implemented green technologies — ranging from cloud computing to smart grids to renewable energy infrastructure — will become major cyber-attack vectors, different CNI sectors agree with this to slightly varying degrees.
For instance, the sector which is most in agreement is finance, at 90%. Following the finance sector is transport and aviation (84%), utilities (83%), communications (82%), and lastly government (74%).
While 42% of respondents said that new technologies are harder to manage and protect, 43% pointed to C-level directors having little understanding of the nature of the new threats as a particular risk on this front (43%). Further, 40% said that significant retraining of cybersecurity teams is needed as the adoption of sustainable technologies continues.
According to the research, only 3% of the CNI organisations that responded have no active IT or OT (operational technology) projects focussed on sustainability initiatives in place. In fact, 62% of organisations have active related IT projects, while 58% have active corresponding OT projects.
When asked about the various ways in which the issue of climate change poses a threat to cybersecurity more generally, 20% believe that climate events such as flooding will lead to damaged critical infrastructure, therefore compromising critical networks. Additionally, 22% think that school or work closures caused by extreme weather will lead to more working from home and therefore increased cyber threats.
Further, 25% also think that economic stress driven by climate change could lead to an increase in cybercrime, while 23% believe a rise in political activism around the climate debate could lead to a rise in crime and hacktivism.
Speaking on the research’s findings, Emma Leith, the Director of Consulting at Bridewell, said: “With malicious actors ready to exploit the instability caused by climate change, CNI cannot afford to let these gaps and oversights persist. Instead, organisations must develop a more coordinated approach to long-term security transformation.”
In response, the report advocates that CNI organisations mount a more robust cyber defence through bringing together the right expertise, technologies, and tools (but also to not lean into tool sprawl), build climate resilience into their security strategies, and create pathways to a more diverse cyber workforce, among other suggestions.
In a bid to reduce bureaucracy, increase efficiency, and improve technological capabilities, Cabinet Office Minister Jeremy Quin has revealed that artificial intelligence (AI) and data experts from the private sector are to be ushered into Whitehall as part of a set of new plans.
Most notably, a series of secondment programmes are set to be launched from autumn onwards, with a “Digital and Data” secondment scheme being the first to be initiated.
With the secondment programmes, tech experts from FTSE100 companies will be targeted by government to help bring external knowledge in-house, and also give civil servants the opportunity to work with professionals at industry-leading businesses.
However, the need to bring in external, temporary tech experts into Whitehall and help level-up technological skills points to an underlying skills gap, something that the UK’s tech private sector knows about all too well.
Quin himself mentioned a skills deficit in the Civil Service, referencing his plans for a streamlined recruitment process, which includes a digital platform for moving civil servants between departments more easily.
In addition to the secondment programmes, another initiative that’s been revealed to be in the pipeline is a “data marketplace,” the goal of which is to help break down barriers when it comes to data sharing inside government.
This builds on the UK Government’s data-focused efforts, some of which Laura Gilbert, the Chief Analyst and Director of Data Science at 10 Downing Street, mentioned at the DIGIT Leader 2023 summit earlier this year.
The marketplace is expected to become accessible to third-parties outside government, such as businesses and researchers, by 2025.
Further, amid the rapid advancement and adoption of artificial intelligence — and as the public sector and private sector alike try to benefit from its advantages, not least when it comes to productivity — Quin also mentioned his ambition for government to utilise it confidently and responsibly.
For instance, following a successful trial, the unit that’s responsible for exploring automation and innovation in government, known as i.AI, is set to become a fixed Civil Service team.
In his speech, Minister Jeremy Quin said: “There are brilliant people in our Civil Service but I know there are many, as can be the case in any organisation, that feel frustrated and stiffed by bureaucracy.
“Alongside the Cabinet Secretary, I shared with Civil Service colleagues at Civil Service Live in Cardiff last week that we need every colleague to be calling out waste and inefficiency, determined to end the frustrations I know many share.
“They can do so by more specialisation, more access to outside voices and fresh ideas, staying longer in post, delivering certainty on what we are seeking to achieve and benefitting from crisp evaluation on whether we have, while embracing the digital future which will transform all our working lives.”
Sir Richard Moore, the head of the United Kingdom’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, made a speech at the British Embassy in Prague today, 19 July, in which he revealed some of the service’s current focuses and how it is — and isn’t — incorporating artificial intelligence into its important, secretive work.
Most pertinently, Moore, who is codenamed “C”, divulged that in the scope of MI6’s strategic focus is Russia amid the ongoing Ukrainian war, as well as China. Moore said that authoritarian regimes are increasingly using artificial intelligence to wage wars of disinformation and propaganda.
To outmove adversaries and protect the UK and other countries from active threats, Moore explained that “My teams are now using AI to augment – but not replace – their own judgement about how people might act in various situations.”
One example he provided is that MI6 teams combining their skills with AI and bulk data to first identify and then subsequently disrupt the flow of weapons to Russia for use against Ukraine.
Although AI and machine learning have been adopted by MI6, Moore stressed that what’s core to MI6 is the “human factor” and that it’s the team’s innate, human traits which will continue to prevail.
“The unique characteristics of human agents in the right places will become still more significant. They are never just passive collectors of information: our agents can be tasked and directed; they can identify new questions we didn’t know to ask; and sometimes they can influence decisions inside a government or terrorist group,” he said.
However, Moore did add the caveat that “we should expect the frontiers of machine capability to advance with startling speed.”
“In future, as AI begins to overtake some aspects of human cognition, it’s possible that digital tools may come to understand – or rather, to be able to predict – human behaviour better than humans can,” he put forward.
Today’s public speech was the second speech Moore has given since becoming MI6’s chief in October 2020.
In his first speech, in November 2021, Moore warned that “Our adversaries are pouring money and ambition into mastering artificial intelligence, quantum computing and synthetic biology, because they know that mastering these technologies will give them leverage.”
He noted that “Meeting the technological challenge head on by opening up – to an unprecedented degree – to partners who can help us master the technologies we need for our operations, and to enable us to innovate faster than our adversaries,” was a key part of his own mission.
These findings come from the FRP Advisory’s latest report, A fork in the road: The future of UK fintech, in which more than 250 senior decision-makers within the UK fintech industry were surveyed. In Scotland, leaders working in fintechs in the hubs of Edinburgh and Glasgow were questioned.
While two fifths of Scots fintechs have flagged concerns about the potential risk of failure by the end of 2023, the report underscores that fintechs in other UK nations and regions are in fact more concerned, with the figure being 42% for firms in the North of England, 46% for those in London, 56% for those in the North East of England, and 58% for those in the Midlands.
The report also highlighted that 26% — the highest proportion recorded — of Scots fintech firms reported a fall in valuation over the last 12 months, as they continued to grapple with rising input costs. Further, 34% expect their valuation to decline over the next year.
A polarised funding environment for fintechs is also deepening the challenges for some Scots firms, while others appear to be clinching the funding needed, suggesting a fight among venture capitalists and lenders. Specifically, 36% of firms have found funding harder to come by over the past 12 months, while 44% have said they’ve accessed finance with greater ease.
This polarisation is apparent in firms’ plans for the future: 70% of the business leaders surveyed said that they had reviewed and amended their exit strategy in the last 12 months. The most popular option was planning to find new funding or investment (46%), followed jointly by seeking new consolidation or acquisition opportunities (40%).
Speaking on these findings, Michelle Elliot, Restructuring Advisory Partner at FRP, said: “There’s no denying that fintech firms in Scotland are clearly finding some aspects of life challenging.
“While many have struggled to grow in the last year and, for many, it’s proving harder to source funding, we can take heart from the resilience that firms are showing in the face of these conditions.
“It’s still concerning that two in five worry about their ability to trade through the next six months but that’s the lowest proportion in the UK. That spirit of enterprise and ambition gives me confidence for the future.”
In the last few years, Scotland’s fintech sector has noticeably gone from strength to strength, and it’s this strong foundation that perhaps is the cause for Scottish fintechs having the lowest proportion of uncertainty in FRP’s survey.
For instance, in 2022, Scotland saw record levels of investment, receiving over £300 million in funding which marked an increase of 200% over the previous year. Further, the number of SME fintech firms increased to 211, a 13% increase over the year, driven by both new startups and international firms setting up in Scotland.
Loot boxes are a video games feature in which players can purchase a bundle of randomised items — from new characters to more or increased experience points to exclusive armour sets and weapon skins — for real-world money or in-game currency.
The set of recommendations have been put forward by the Technical Working Group, a group of representatives from major international video game platforms, publishers, and developers. The Technical Working Group was set up by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and has been tasked with the development of these principles.
With the new principles, the UK gaming industry can effectively self-regulate the use of loot boxes while no current UK laws on loot boxes are in place.
Specifically, the 11 principles include:
Making available the technological controls to restrict anyone under 18 from acquiring a loot box without consent from a parent, carer, or guardian.
Driving awareness and uptake of these technological controls through regular communication, starting with a targeted public information campaign launching in July.
Forming an expert panel on age assurance in the games industry which will meet regularly to develop and share best practices and engage with the relevant regulators, policymakers, and stakeholders.
Disclosing the presence of loot boxes prior to the purchase or download of a game.
Giving clear probability disclosures on the likelihood of receiving given virtual items.
Designing and presenting loot boxes in an easy-to-understand manner for players.
Supporting the implementation of the Video Games Research Framework, a guide recently published by the DCMS to help build a stronger evidence base for future policymaking.
Continuing to tackle the unauthorised external sale of loot box items and to continue to invest in IP protection.
Committing to lenient refund policies on directly purchased loot boxes or purchased in-game currency used to acquire loot boxes where spending has been made without parental consent.
Advancing protections for all players.
Working with the UK Government and other stakeholders to measure the effectiveness of these principles following an implementation period of 12 months.
Speaking on the principles, Daniel Wood, Ukie’s Co-CEO, said: “Publishing these shared Principles for how the industry approaches loot boxes is a UK first and provides us with a clear direction moving forwards.
“The Principles will improve protections for all players and underlines the industry’s commitment to safe and responsible play. We look forward to working collaboratively across industry and with others to implement them over the coming months.”
Further, Minister for the Creative Industries, John Whittingdale, commented: “We’ve been clear the video games industry needs to do more to protect children and adults from the harms associated with loot boxes.
“These new principles are a big step forward to make sure players can enjoy video games responsibly and safely.
“I look forward to seeing games companies put the plans into action and will be watching their progress closely.”
Mentioned in the principles, one of the first industry measures that’s set to be undertaken is the launch of a £1 million, three-year public information campaign to raise awareness of player controls.
Ukie said that the campaign, launching in July, will guide parents on how to use parental controls that help manage aspects like loot boxes, screen time, online interactions, and access to age-appropriate content.
During the session, the Foreign Secretary is set to call for international cooperation to appropriately manage the mixed implications of artificial intelligence amid its rapid development, not least when it comes to matters of international and national security.
The surge of interest in, adoption, and usage of artificial intelligence, spurred on by the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI in November last year, has prompted governments and regulators across the globe to scrutinise approaches of responsibly mitigating AI’s myriad risks in crucial areas such as defence and security, cybersecurity, privacy, and ethics.
However, clamping down on artificial intelligence with too much force could limit the inherent transformational benefits and positives that the technology brings and can continue to bring, and it’s this balancing act that the UK Government has stated that it’s aiming towards.
The Foreign Secretary himself is expected to say later: “Momentous opportunities – on a scale that we can barely imagine – lie before us.
“We must seize these opportunities and grasp the challenges of AI – including those for international peace and security – decisively, optimistically and from a position of global unity on essential principles.”
Further, “No country will be untouched by AI, so we must involve and engage the widest coalition of international actors from all sectors.
“The UK is home to many of the world’s trail-blazing AI developers and foremost AI safety researchers.
“So this autumn the UK plans to bring world leaders together for the first major global summit on AI safety.
“Our shared goal will be to consider the risks of AI and decide how they can be reduced through coordinated action.”
The global AI summit that’s planned to take place in Autumn — and is cited as the first major AI safety summit — was first announced by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak early last month.
Speaking on the announcement of the summit, the Prime Minister said: “No one country can do this alone. This is going to take a global effort. But with our vast expertise and commitment to an open, democratic international system, the UK will stand together with our allies to lead the way.”
Both the Conservatives and Labour discuss the intersection of AI and security
While the Foreign Secretary visits the Security Council Chamber in New York, Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper spoke in London yesterday about how AI is a particular concern regarding national security and how Labour would act if they were in power.
In an address to the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), the Shadow Home Secretary mentioned that while technology creates new opportunities for Britain, new significant threats also arise and that “Generative AI takes this to a new level.”
As an example of how national security can be affected by AI, she referenced Jaswant Singh Chail, the first person to be convicted of treason since 1981. “Chail, who entered the grounds of Windsor Castle intent on assassinating the Queen on Christmas Day 2021, was spurred on by conversations generated by his ‘AI girlfriend’.”
She also referred to chatbots that were being created to help foster radical outlooks.
In response, the Shadow Home Secretary said that “Labour will criminalise those who purposely train chatbots to spout terrorist material, and we will work with the intelligence community and law enforcement on ways to stop radicalising chatbots that are inciting violence or amplifying extremist views.”
Amid deepening eco-consciousness, increased remote working and the consequent cybersecurity concerns, and the proliferation of IoT devices, contemporary consumers want more than just fast internet speeds when it comes to their broadband, according to data from Cisco’s most recent survey.
The Cisco Broadband Survey, which uncovered the following findings, was conducted by independent research consultancy Censuswide. It surveyed nearly 22,000 workers across the UK, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Poland, Saudi Arabia, the UEA, and South Africa to gain their thoughts on broadband in 2023 and beyond.
Specifically, on the environmental front, the survey discovered that 65% of consumers are now concerned about the carbon footprint of their broadband, with those aged 18-24 most concerned (73%). In light of this, 77% of people said they’re willing to pay more for sustainable broadband, with roughly a quarter happy to pay a premium price of more than 20%. This mirrors the wider market trend that more consumers want companies to mitigate negative impacts on the planet.
Further, the survey found that security is the second most important priority among people choosing a broadband package (38%), with internet speed narrowly ranking in top place (40%). While respondents seemingly want to be secure when online — not least due to the surge in working from home in the last few years — the survey surfaced something of a dichotomy here: only a quarter of respondents have turned on their router’s firewall, despite Cisco’s previous research finding that 57% of consumers worry about cybercriminals hacking their devices.
Consumers are also embracing the shift towards a “smarter” digital life at home with Internet of Things (IoT) devices, which is driving the number of internet connections and a demand for reliable bandwidth higher. The survey uncovered that the majority already have — or expect to have — their cars (67%), lights (74%), appliances (71%), energy (76%), and water (64%) connected.
On this, 54% of respondents said they were feeling positive about new ways to connect their homes and lives to the internet, despite 63% saying that the cost-of-living crisis has impacted the way they spend money on digital services. 21% have reported moving to a lower cost broadband package, and 16% have cancelled streaming services.
Speaking on the survey’s findings and how the global tech industry should respond moving forward, Gordon Thomson, the Vice President Service Provider – EMEA at Cisco, said: “The old technology adage of ‘faster, cheaper, better’ has not been relevant for a long time.”
He continued: “It’s now about simplifying solutions and building networks that can fuel global connectivity and economic growth, facilitating and protecting the digitalization and automation of everyday activities, all without losing sight of our impact on the future.”
“In addition to the cybersecurity threat landscape constantly evolving and expanding, we have to deal with the increasing threat of climate change. Prioritizing sustainability and security in broadband infrastructure is therefore crucial to enable lasting and resilient digital transformation,” he noted.
“The carbon footprint of the information and communications technology sector is estimated to account for around 2.1 – 3.9% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and more than half of that comes from networks and data centers.”
These figures come from the trade association’s recently released 2023 Scotland Facts and Figures publication, which looked at the turnover, employment, and productivity value of the four aforementioned sectors.
Specifically, Scotland’s space (i.e. outside of Earth’s atmosphere) sector saw a turnover of £3.1 billion, while its aerospace (both within and outside Earth’s atmosphere) sector yielded £1.1bn. Further, the Scottish defence sector’s turnover was £2bn in 2022, while security’s was £1.4bn. Overall, around £3.2bn in value add for the UK economy was driven by the four sectors in Scotland.
In terms of employment, Scotland’s aerospace sector directly employs around 4,500 people, while the space sector employs 8,500. The defence sector, meanwhile, employs 13,250, while the figure for the security sector is 8,750. This totals around 33,500 direct employees, roughly 1,500 of whom are apprentices.
The report also highlighted that the output per worker of the four Scottish sectors is estimated to be £95,000, 47% more than the whole of the UK economy productivity value.
The publication was launched at a roundtable with Rt Hon Alister Jack MP, Secretary of State for Scotland, as well as Mark Goldsack, Director of UKDSE, and representatives from ADS businesses in the region.
Speaking on the report, Alister Jack commented: “It’s clear that Scottish skills, expertise and innovation make an enormous contribution to the UK’s defence, security, aerospace and space sectors.
“The UK Government is committed to growing our economy, including by working with these industries to support their success in the UK and in exporting overseas.”
Further, Warrick Malcolm, ADS Scotland Director, added: “Innovative Scottish businesses are major employers, and our 2023 Scotland Facts and Figures provides a snapshot of their contribution to the wider UK economy.
“ADS members in Scotland are recognised internationally for their contribution to the global sectors ADS represents. In the coming years, it is essential Scotland’s growth continues, securing the UK’s world-leading position in rapidly advancing sectors, such as Space.”
Scotland’s space sector is arguably one of the country’s most exciting sectors, and is rising faster than anywhere else in the UK, according to Scottish Development International (SDI).
With nearly one fifth of all UK space roles are in Scotland, and with over 130 space companies currently operating across the country, the sector is aiming to grow in value to over £4 billion in 2030.
Just last week, DIGIT reported on the news that Orbex, the UK-based spaceflight company with a ‘home’ spaceport in North Scotland, has expanded its facilities ahead of the launch of its Prime rocket — a two-stage rocket designed to transport and release small satellites weighing up to 180kg.
The spaceport, which is based in Sutherland, is being built and operated by Orbex, under a fifty-year lease, with the option of extending for a further twenty-five years.
In what it believes to be potentially the first GVA contribution analysis for open source anywhere in the world, OpenUK took estimates from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport that the 2022 GVA of the UK’s tech sector was £50.71 billion.
It then took the average revenue from open source software by companies in the UK tech sector in 2022 to identify £13.59 billion of value generated by open source-related products and services.
The report stated that “This finding is important as it demonstrated that besides investment, open innovation, sharing of knowledge and collaboration, the productive capacity of Open Source Software accounts for over a quarter of the UK tech sector GVA in 2022.”
Speaking of investment, OpenUK also found that 44% of organisations will increase their investment in open source in the coming 12 months, while 47% anticipate their investment will stay the same. Only 2% said they intend to decrease investment.
According to the report, “if those who intend to increase their investment do so by the average investment of our sample, it will add a further £225.2 million to £326.6 million of investment in technology in the UK.”
In terms of how the UK open source software market can be grown and developed further, Matt Barker, the co-founder of Jetstack and the Entrepreneur in Residence at OpenUK, suggested that lessons could be learned from our American counterparts, not least when it comes to commercialisation.
“Brits know how to create cutting edge Open Source Software, but Americans know how to grow and commercialise it,” he said.
“Fortunately we’re learning, and where 10 years ago it was second-hand from the likes of Elastic, Confluent, MongoDB, it’s gotten a bit closer to home thanks to the success of Snyk, Revolut, Babylon, Hopin and others.
“It was only a few years ago I was struggling to find people in the UK with any first hand experience of productising and commercialising software at a large scale, but as we continue to evolve, I’m growing more certain in the ability to find those people now we’ve created a few home runs of our own.”
