Lorca announces new cohort of 20 security scaleups

The London Office for Rapid Cyber Security Advancement (Lorca) has announced the 20 companies that will move forward to join its fourth intake, focusing on automation, zero trust and supply chain security, among other things.

Lorca, which is backed by the government and located at the Plexal innovation centre at Here East in Stratford, said its fourth cohort was its largest and most diverse yet, including a number of international firms from Denmark, Israel, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland and the US.

The scaleups will take part in a year-long programme that will support them in scaling, securing investment, breaking into new markets and participate in overseas trade missions, all in support of the British government’s avowed goal to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online. As always, Lorca will take no equity or IP in any of the participants.

“Lorca exists to bring cutting-edge technology to market and to enable the most promising cyber innovators become globally competitive businesses,” said Lorca programme director Saj Huq.

“The international reach and the variety of solutions within our incoming fourth cohort is an exciting demonstration of both the strength and attractiveness of the UK market, as well as an illustration of the increasingly prominent role that Lorca plays as a convener and collaborator within the global innovation ecosystem.”

This year’s programme will focus on three key themes, the Connected Economy, exploring how security tech can enable sustainable economic growth, Connected Everything, exploring the challenges of securing billions of smart devices, and Connected Everyone, exploring some of the ethical questions around data use and trust.

The 20 scaleups are Acreto, Anzen Technology Systems, Avnos, Contingent, Continuum Security, Darkbeam, Heimdal Security, Keyless, Kinnami, L7 Defence, Orpheus, Osirium, Risk Ledger, ShieldIOT, SureCert, ThreatAware, ThunderCipher (Licel), Variti, Vividia and Westgate Cyber Security.

They will also receive technical and commercial support from Lorca’s delivery partner, consultancy Deloitte, while engineering expertise will be on hand courtesy of Queen’s University Belfast’s Centre for Secure Innovation Technologies (CSIT).

“We continue to be impressed and inspired by the quality and volume of applicants to Lorca,” said Deloitte director of cyber risk services Stephen Wray.

“This fourth cohort highlights some outstanding products and solutions that seek to address the complex cyber challenges facing our clients today. Deloitte’s dedicated cyber team will continue to provide technical and market expertise to the latest cohort, supporting the development of cyber innovation.”

Louise Cushnahan, CSIT head of innovation, added: “Our academic and engineering staff have a strong track record in supporting UK cyber security companies. In recent years almost 100 have benefited from our expertise to scale-up and deliver truly novel solutions to global markets with recent government figures showing that UK cyber security exports topped £2bn for the first time.

“The breadth of this cohort represents a rich opportunity to deliver further economic, technological and societal outcomes for CSIT’s cutting edge research and innovation in the area of Secure Connected Intelligence,” she said.

Lorca launched in 2018 backed by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Over 50 companies have moved through its programme since then, securing nearly £60m of investment.

Recent notable successes include Privitar and Crypto Quantique, which secured multi-million dollar funding rounds between them, ThinkCyber, which was recently selected as a finalist in the NYCx Moonshot Cyber Challenge – a project of New York’s mayor Bill de Blasio, and CyberOwl, which has already won a contract with the UK’s Ministry of Defence.