UK safety tech sector sees strong revenue and employment growth

UK “safety tech” corporations noticed a revenue improve of 21% over the previous 12 months to achieve £381m, making it one of many fastest-growing sectors of the UK tech trade, based on a government-backed sectoral evaluation.

Conducted by Perspective Economics on behalf of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the UK safety tech sector: 2022 analysis discovered that the variety of corporations delivering safety tech merchandise and companies grew by 17% to 117, with jobs within the sector rising by 30% to whole 2,850.

Of the 117 safety tech corporations recognized by the evaluation, 57% are primarily based outdoors London and the South East, with hotspots in Leeds and Edinburgh, and rising centres of exercise in Greater Manchester, Oxford, Bristol and Belfast.

“There are encouraging signs of newly registered startups, particularly in the domains of tackling disinformation and developing new approaches to content moderation and video and image analysis at scale,” stated the evaluation. “Existing companies specialising in communication and semantics are additionally shifting into the safety tech area.

“As a result of considerable growth within UK safety tech, there has been sustained interest from the investment community. It remains likely that the UK could see its first safety tech unicorn [a company worth over $1bn] emerge in the coming years.”

The report stated whole exterior funding into UK safety tech reached £63m cross 16 offers in 2021, though about half of this (£30m) went to Faculty, a synthetic intelligence (AI) firm that has beforehand labored on the controversial NHS Covid-19 datastore. It is run by Mark Warner, who additionally suggested on the information operation for the Dominic Cummings-led Vote Leave EU referendum marketing campaign.

Other investments embrace £15.2m raised by SafeToNet, which makes use of AI and analytics to assist safeguard youngsters by detecting threats; £5.8m raised by Vault Platform, a office misconduct reporting app; and £5m raised by Cyacomb, which is working with legislation enforcement companies internationally to detect baby sexual abuse materials (CSAM).

“Making the online world safer is not only the right thing to do, it’s good for business,” stated digital minister Damian Collins. “UK tech companies are on the leading edge creating sensible options to the dangers posed by the web in order that it continues to be a profit, not a detriment, to folks’s lives.

“They have blazed a trail of growth, innovation and job creation to become world leaders in their field and we are committed to maintaining their upward trajectory.”

According to a separate Ipsos report launched on 27 July, Trust, safety and the digital economy, corporations that undertake on-line safety expertise additionally expertise larger model belief, larger consumer engagement and higher workers and buyer retention.

“I am delighted to see that the Safety tech sector analysis confirms there has been strong growth in sales, employment and investment in the sector and it remains one of the fastest growing parts of the economy,” stated Ian Stevenson, chair of the Online Safety Tech Industry Association (OSTIA).

“The new Trust, safety and the digital economy report highlights how platforms benefit from safety tech by creating healthier and more resilient online environments, which have commercial value as well as benefiting their users. These new analyses will help OSTIA members and others in the sector continue these positive trends.”

The sectoral evaluation and Ipsos report come within the wake of the UK authorities pausing the passage of the Online Safety Bill after legislative timetabling points meant Parliament was unable to push the invoice by earlier than the summer time recess.

In his foreword to the DCMS report, Collins stated the federal government would proceed to fund the safety tech sector, and famous: “The Safety Tech Challenge Fund has already supported the development of innovative technologies to help keep children safe in end-to-end encrypted [E2EE] environments, while upholding user privacy.”

Three corporations engaged on a Safety Tech Challenge Fund mission to detect CSAM earlier than it reaches encrypted environments advised Computer Weekly in January 2022 that pre-encryption scans for such content material – also referred to as client-side scanning – could be carried out with out compromising privateness.

Although Apple tried to introduce client-side scanning expertise – referred to as Neural Hash – to detect recognized baby sexual abuse photographs on iPhones final 12 months, the plans have been placed on indefinite maintain after an outcry by tech specialists.

A report by 15 main laptop scientists, Bugs in our pockets: the risks of client-side scanning, revealed  by Columbia University, recognized a number of ways in which states, malicious actors and abusers might flip the expertise round to trigger hurt to others or society.

“Client-side scanning, by its nature, creates serious security and privacy risks for all society, while the assistance it can provide for law enforcement is at best problematic,” the scientists stated. “There are multiple ways in which client-side scanning can fail, can be evaded and can be abused.”

Speaking with Computer Weekly in November 2021 after the announcement of the Challenge Fund winners, then-digital minister Chris Philp stated the federal government wouldn’t mandate any scanning that goes past the scope of uncovering baby abuse materials.

“These technologies are CSAM-specific,” he stated. “I met with the companies two days ago and with all of these technologies, it’s about scanning images and identifying them as either being previously identified CSAM images or first-generation created new ones – that is the only capability inherent in these technologies.”

Asked whether or not there was any functionality to scan for every other kinds of picture or content material in messages, Philp added: “They’re not designed to do that. They’d need to be repurposed for that, as that’s not how they’ve been designed or set up. They’re specific CSAM scanning technologies.”