The NCSC and Plexal welcome four more startups to solve critical cyber challenges

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and Plexal, the innovation company founded by Delancey, are today welcoming four more tech companies to NCSC For Startups. The startups will work with the NCSC and Plexal to solve some of the UK’s most important cyber challenges, including tackling the growing challenge of malvertising.

These companies will develop, adapt and pilot technology, working at the NCSC For Startups HQ in Cheltenham as well as remotely.

The four startups joining the programme are:

Lupovis: an AI-based deception solution for manipulating adversaries that have penetrated your network. It engages adversaries through a sequence of decoys and lures them through the network.

RankedRight: an automated triage system that ranks and assigns vulnerabilities based on your rules, enabling your team to spend their time tackling the most critical or high-risk issues.

ESPROFILER: A platform to help organisations maximise return on their cyber security investments, increasing efficiency and security. It helps customers understand what security products they own, what they have deployed, and the threats those products should protect against.

Traced: Traced believes that privacy is a human right. And it’s created a mobile threat defence solution that provides protection against mobile-borne threats to businesses, without compromising people’s privacy.

The startups were chosen based on their relevance to four mission-critical challenges identified by the NCSC:

Enabling the analysis of network activity to detect, respond to and recover from cyber attacks rapidly

Enabling a better understanding of all the devices that are present on a network (including third party components) and enhancing security

Helping users to be safe online

Tackling malvertising by measuring the scale of the problem, providing related threat
intelligence and securing the underlying adtech infrastructure

Plexal now delivers four of the five government-backed cyber programmes in the UK and is working to improve national security and digital resilience through emerging technologies and accelerating the growth of the UK cyber startup ecosystem.

The innovation company has delivered LORCA (the London Office for Rapid Cybersecurity Advancement) for the last three years and is currently delivering LORCA Ignite, which is supporting cyber scaleups. Over the last three years, LORCA has helped cohort companies raise more than £200m in investment and generate over £37m in revenue.

Plexal is also delivering NCSC For Startups, which connects cyber startups to technical experts within UK government to drive innovations that can make the UK safer online.

The startups will benefit from NCSC’s expertise and insights, along with Plexal’s experience in working closely with startups. This open collaboration model will help startups develop and adapt their technology to address security challenges identified by the NCSC and achieve a closer product-market fit.

Five startups have already been through the programme this year: PORGiESOFT, cyber unicorn Rebellion Defense, Meterian, Exalens and Enclave have participated in a programme that saw them receive mentoring, workshops and direct support to help them iterate and develop their solutions.

NCSC For Startups is delivered by the NCSC and Plexal and is supported by Deloitte, CyNam, which brings Cheltenham’s cyber community together, Cheltenham-based coworking space Hub8 and tech skills provider QA. NCSC For Startups will continue to bring on companies in 2021 and early 2022.

NCSC For Startups is the successor to the NCSC Cyber Accelerator, a programme that helped more than 40 tech companies raise over £100m in external investment.

Chris Ensor, NCSC Deputy Director for Cyber Skills and Growth at NCSC, comments:

Saj Huq, director of innovation at Plexal, comments: “Plexal is excited to continue being the NCSC’s innovation partner and helping startups develop or adapt their solutions. NCSC For Startups is an entirely unique opportunity for the public and private sectors to work together, and for startups to gain insights from the NCSC into emerging challenges that we urgently need from the market. Cybersecurity solutions that solve real-world problems can never be created in an information vacuum.”