The Technology Access Programme will give participating organisations the opportunity to access this early-stage software and prototype hardware technology to investigate in their own R&D teams and validate the core capabilities and benefits. The programme will be run by the Digital Catapult, the UK authority on advanced digital technology. UKRI through the DSbD Challenge awarded the Digital Catapult £2M of funding to provide the UK technology community with a series of events and workshops and give participating businesses and developers the opportunity to get hands-on experience of the new technologies. The Technology Access Programme will also improve the competitiveness of UK tech businesses through early access and adoption of new technologies. Interested UK businesses will be able to register their interest via the DSbD website.

“There is a continuous escalation in Cyber-crime and the Cyber-security response. DSbD aims to stimulate a fundamental change in technology so that the digital world can be secure by design with data protected by default. I’m pleased to support the DSbD Technology Access Programme to give businesses the opportunity to understand how their products and services can benefit, blocking vulnerabilities so that their operations and customers can be better protected against the growing costs and harm of a cyber-attack.”

John Goodacre, Challenge Director for Digital Security by Design

“In today’s highly competitive global marketplace, companies need to find new ways of reducing security vulnerabilities in vital systems, devices, vehicles and public infrastructure. The DSbD innovations in cybersecurity have the potential to provide significant new levels of protection for industrial computer systems and widely used devices. Digital Catapult is excited to lead the Technology Access Programme, an important strand of work which will provide hands-on opportunities for developers and organisations to experiment with these digital security technologies and provide vital feedback to help shape a safer future.”

Jeremy Silver, CEO, Digital Catapult

News broke this week that Microsoft has mitigated the largest-ever DDoS attack in history that peaked at 3.47 Tbps. Subsequently, in coming days it witnessed another two waves which were both more than 2.5 Tbps in range. The reporter would like just general commentary as well as potentially touching on what this means for us as customers in the coming days, the gravity of the situation, and the preventive measures.

Commenting on the news, John Goodacre, Challenge Director for Digital Security by Design, and professor of computer architectures at the University of Manchester, said “As with this headline DDoS attack, 1000’s of compromised computers and consumer devices are used collectively to inflict harm. Microsoft and others work to block such attacks, while also ensuring they are more resilient to compromise. Future underpinning technologies, such as those being developed as part of the UKRI Digital Security by Design (DSbD) programme have the promise to block around 70% of the ongoing vulnerability in computers from exploitation and will significantly reduce the ability to create these large DDoS networks of compromised machines.”

You can find out more about the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund here