19 Dec 2024

Cyber Security SME Forum: Year in Review

In 2024, techUK’s Cyber Security SME Forum has celebrated and championed the work of cyber SMEs across the sector. Through a series of exciting events and opportunities, we’ve bought members together to share insights, tackle challenges and explore growth opportunities.

Webinar with Advice Cloud

In April, the Forum was delighted to welcome Chris Farthing, CEO at Advice Cloud who provided an overview of the central government cyber market. During the event, we looked at the most common routes to market, the range of government departments that are buying cyber security and useful tips to overcome barriers to market. You can watch the recording of this event here.

With the Procurement Act going live in February 2025, look out for more Forum activity on this topic in the New Year.

Webinar with Innovate UK Business Growth

In September, we hosted the Innovate UK Business Growth team for a webinar on the opportunities for business to use their scale up and support programmes to achieve their growth ambitions. Members heard about how the innovation agency’s products and services allow businesses to develop a strategic approach to funding and finance. You can review the event slides here.

CDDO Secure by Design Event

We were delighted to host the Central Digital and Data Office for a briefing on the announcement that Secure by Design will become mandatory for central government/ALB contracts. The event focused on the principles and the challenges SMEs might face when looking to implement them.

Vetting Transformation SME Event

We held a joint event on vetting transformation with the Defence and Security and Public Safety SME Forum’s in October. The event was designed to address the unique challenges and barriers SMEs face across the defence and security sectors, with a goal to enhance understanding of these pain points within the SME community. We will be doing more targeted work on this piece of activity in 2025.

Cyber Innovation Den 2024

This year saw the return of our sixth annual Cyber Innovation Den. This year our 10 finalists showcased solutions that harness emerging technologies to strengthen the security and resilience of the UK’s critical national infrastructure. It was an exciting afternoon with the level of competition demonstrating the remarkable innovation within the sector. ESProfiler was named tehcUK’s Cyber Innovator 2024. You can catch-up on the exciting event here.

All eyes on 2025…

Looking ahead to next year, we’ve got an exciting programme of events lined up. So do keep a look out on the Cyber Security SME Forum page.

Mark your calendar’s for our first event of the year, when the Department for Business and Trade join us for a webinar on the 5^th February. The DBT team will provide an overview of how the Department work with the UK defence and security sectors to help them achieve success in global markets.

We look forward to welcoming you to more Cyber SME Forum events in the future!

Cyber Security Programme

The Cyber Security Programme provides a channel for our industry to engage with commercial and government partners to support growth in this vital sector, which underpins and enables all organisations. The programme brings together industry and government to overcome the joint challenges the sector faces and to pursue key opportunities to ensure the UK remains a leading cyber nation, including on issues such as the developing threat, bridging the skills gap and secure-by-design.

Learn more