Leading experts in technology and finance have joined together to launch a new Scottish Centre of Excellence for digital trust – which will aim to make the digital world safer and more resilient.

Edinburgh Napier University will host the Scottish Centre of Excellence in Digital Trust and Distributed Ledger Technology, in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow, and Fintech Scotland, and thanks to initial funding from Scottish Enterprise.

The Centre is part of a wider aim to position Scotland as a global leader in digital trust innovation, supporting a range of industries from financial services to healthcare and beyond.

As more infrastructure, data, and transactions move online, digital trust technology has an increasingly important role to play in building resilience and security, while guarding against threats like cyber-crime.

“Scotland has the opportunity to lead the way when it comes to digital trust technology,” said Professor Bill Buchanan from ENU’s School of Computing, Engineering & the Built Environment, and director of the Centre.

“We have digitised a great deal of our work, but many aspects of privacy, security and resilience still need to be fully understood.

“Advances in computing technology will see many of our existing methods of establishing digital trust facing a range of risks, making the work of this Centre all the more significant.”

By being industry-led, the Centre will look to solve real-world challenges in digital trust and distributed ledger technologies, delivering immediate benefits to the financial services sector and beyond. The team behind the project hope it will go on to support new start-up and spin-out companies, while working alongside established firms.

Based at ENU, the Centre will bring together two other leading digital trust technologies research labs at the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh.

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Developed alongside FinTech Scotland, the Centre’s plan has an initial two-year focus on delivering innovation, actionable research, and skills training to support industry led research calls around areas such as digital payments, digital assets and digital identity.

Nanik Ramchandani, CEO of the Centre, said: “This is a significant step forward in Scotland, and will help build a solid foundation towards enhancing digital trust.

“In a world where the dark side of AI is making it impossible to distinguish between the real and not, continued innovation to strengthen trust using privacy preserving technologies is essential.”