Cyber resilience economic opportunity: key actions 2018-2021

Appendix Three: Supporting Institutions

"Supporting institutions" is a term used to loosely describe the various organisations, centres of excellence or mechanisms that aim to help improve capability, build capacity, and encourage growth, vigour and renewal.

Innovation centres are a specific type of supporting institution designed to increase the pace of business innovation by encouraging collaboration between business and academia, helping draw on research and expertise to solve problems posed by industry, and providing space for collaborative work and shared access to equipment.

Accelerators are organisations that offer focussed support and funding to start ups, often including access to mentorship, networking, office space and other resources.

The term "hub" generally refers to a specific location, building or group of buildings that brings together expertise in a particular subject area.

Possible areas of focus for cyber supporting institutions are varied, with functions that include:

• Hosting of penetration testing services
• Industrial collaboration, outreach and awareness raising
• A place for SMEs to turn to during cyber security crises
• A centre of excellence for academic research into cyber resilience
• A centre of learning and cyber experience for apprentices
• A co-location opportunity for agencies involved in cyber crime prevention, detection and prosecution
• A Scottish node for UK cyber authorities.

Across Scotland, there are already numerous supporting institutions that either focus on, or relate closely to cyber, including for example:

• SICSA's Cyber Nexus
• Scottish Business Resilience Centre
• The Cyber Academy
• Edinburgh Napier University's SOC Lab
• The University of Edinburgh's Centre of Excellence for Cyber Security Research
• Scotland IS
• CENSIS

This is not an exhaustive list and we expect more to develop. To operate to maximum effect, it will be important that Scottish supporting institutions respond to four key challenges:

1. Coordination – where each institution fulfils a clear value-added role, and duplication of effort is avoided

2. Strategic alignment – where each institution supports the overall strategic vision for cyber in Scotland and the UK

3. Best practice – where our supporting institutions exemplify our national brand values of quality, integrity and trust

4. Collaboration – where our supporting institutions capitalise as much as possible on Scotland's broader digital capabilities, such as data and Fintech.

We anticipate that the actions in this plan that focus on coordinating and coalescing the cyber landscape will help address these challenges.