Dan (middle), James (left), and Jules (right) enjoying the first day of the event.
The 10th & 11th May 2022 saw the return of CyberUK after the coronavirus pandemic, and even better it was on our home turf of Wales! Awen was there to promote ourselves in the UK’s flagship cyber security conference & exhibition.
The week was kicked off in the evening of Monday the 9th May with the CyberUK Leaders Dinner at the Celtic Manor. From Awen; Executive Chairman Daniel Lewis and CTO Jules Farrow were in attendance. We had insightful pre- and post- dinner speeches from:
NCSC CEO, Lindy Cameron
Welsh Government First Minister, Mark Drakeford
Palo Alto Networks Chief Product Officer, Lee Klarich
Member of the House of Lords, and former CEO of Stonewall, Baroness Ruth Hunt
On the morning of Tuesday 10th May; we came to the ICC Wales armed with 250 packs of Welsh Cakes to give away to visitors to our exhibition stand.
Daniel and Jules were joined by Awen’s new CEO Paul Dennis and Awen’s Head of Partnerships James Sandrone. We had a stand in the well built Welsh Pavilion, alongside Welsh Government and other great Welsh cyber SME’s including Arcanum, Wolfberry and Security Foundry, as well as the Thales NDEC.
We saw a steady flow of people throughout the event. We saw people that we’ve not seen for a long time. We met with people who we have only ever seen on a video call. We also bumped into a fair few people who we had never met before.
Importantly we solidified our relationship with the NCSC, the Welsh Government and the Cyber Resilience Centres across the UK, as well as two new commercial partnerships which we shall announce in due course. (Although we slipped the news out to those in attendance already! Stay tuned for the official press releases!)
Our welshcakes went down a treat at the Welsh Pavilion!
On Wednesday 11th May it was the OT Cluster at CyberUK (with a panel consisting of Jules from Awen, Marie from Arcanum and John from Cyber Wales). The session was titled “Communications crisis - How our critical national infrastructure can be better protected from cyber-attacks with a cup of tea and a Welsh cake,” and detailed why the sharing of best practice and latest technological developments in cyber security for Operational Technology (OT) systems is vital to helping secure Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) in the UK.
As part of the efforts towards CyberUK; Trade and Invest Wales released a cyber security key industry explainer video for their website. The video features #TeamAwen members. A follow-up interview with Daniel, and inside story write-up will be released soon.
Awen were also featured in other parts of the exhibition including on the NCSC for Startups stand, and the Cyber Wales ecosystem stand. We put a lot into exhibitions because we believe that “you get out what you put in.” CyberUK was no exception, we put our all into it, and we have already started to see a positive reaction arise from our efforts.
CyberUK 2023 shall be in Northern Ireland. Will we see you there?
Maybe you came to CyberUK 2022? Maybe you couldn’t make it this time? Maybe you tried one of our tasty Welsh Cakes which had our logo on the wrapper? If so, drop us an email or message to let us know your thoughts, we would love to hear from you!