‘Demo Day’ at Europe’s First Cyber Security Accelerator

Cyber London, Europe’s first dedicated cyber security accelerator programme, today held its first ‘Demo Day’ in Hammersmith, London. Founders of the six participating startups, along with two further companies­in­residence, demonstrated the results of their participation in the three­month programme to a packed audience of investors, businesses, industry experts and government representatives. In addition, it was revealed at Demo Day that one company in the cohort has graduated from Cyber London to the highly­regarded Y­Combinator accelerator programme based in Silicon Valley.

Speaking at Demo Day, Cyber London co­founder Grace Cassy of Epsilon Advisory Partners, said:

‘Cyber Security is vital to the future of the Internet and to the digital economy but, despite our long history of innovation and leadership in this field, the UK still has little of the infrastructure needed to support the entrepreneurs who are building and securing our future. Our belief that the UK can play a leading role in this field was the motivation for establishing Cyber London. We are hugely proud of what the teams have achieved already, and we wish them every success for the future.’

Working from dedicated secure facilities in Hammersmith, the companies from Cyber London’s first cohort have developed their own unique approaches to cyber security, ranging from biometric identity management and automated network defence, to big data analysis and visualisation.

The six selected teams in the first Cyber London cohort were:

• AimBrain​: Mobile behavioural biometrics software framework: a seamless security layer which tracks how users interact with their device.
• Sphere Secure Workspace​: A BYOD solution which creates a separate and secure environment on personal mobile devices to be managed by the employer.
• Cyberlytic​: Real­time risk assessment of cyber­attacks to help security teams triage alerts and reduce response times from days to minutes.
• Intruder: ​Mirrors the activities of cyber attackers without the noise produced by vulnerability scanners and penetration test companies ­ affordable, effortless cyber­security.
• Mentat Innovations​: Machine learning in motion: scalable, robust, autonomous intelligence for detecting anomalous behaviour through metadata processing in the Internet of Everything.
• Ruuta: ​A social router that solves the everyday problems people have with their Internet boxes.

Two established cyber­security companies, Ripjar and SQR Systems, also chose to operate from Cyber London’s unique facility as companies­in­residence, so as to enjoy the benefits of co­working with the other teams.

• Ripjar: ​Making sense of complex data at scale, and applying state of the art analytics to help highlight and identify insights.
• SQR Systems​: Secure voice, video and messaging using a combined encryption and compression technology for end­to­end security.

At the event, Cyber London announced that Sir Iain Lobban, Director of GCHQ until November 2014, had joined as Chairman of the Advisory Board. Congratulating Cyber London’s first cohort after their Demo Day pitches, Sir Iain said:

‘It is fantastic to see how much progress the first Cyber London cohort has made since we introduced them onstage here in April. This is a vital area of the economy, for Britain and for Europe more broadly, and I am delighted to be involved as Chair of the Cyber London Advisory Board. I look forward to following the progress of cohort one, and to seeing many more exciting technologies and companies develop in future Cyber London programmes.’

Cyber security expert Mikko Hyppönen, Chief Research Officer of F­Secure, gave a keynote speech at the event, outlining some of the latest challenges in the field. In his address, Hyppönen praised the Cyber London initiative, saying:

‘We face more attacks than ever before, and that’s why we need more security skills than ever before ­ and we need to be able to come up with new and better ways of fighting cyber risks. Right now, we need new and innovative security startups more than ever’.

The event took place at the headquarters of Winton, one of the UK’s most successful and innovative investment management firms, which also acted as host for the Cyber London accelerator programme. Investor interest in the participating teams was extremely strong, with a capacity crowd of 130 people filling the Winton auditorium.