Event round-up: Cyber Innovation Den 2026

Introduction  

techUK was delighted to host the eighth edition of our Cyber Innovation Den on Tuesday 6 October. We welcomed leaders from across the cyber security sector for an afternoon of insightful keynotes and panels alongside a showcase of high-quality, innovative pitches. 

Congratulations to Cavero Secure, crowned techUK Cyber Innovator 2026, and to OTShield and CyberSiARA, who were each awarded as highly commended. 

This year’s attendees heard insights from leaders in the sector including: 

• Saba Ahmed, Managing Director, Cyber Resilience, Accenture 

• Josh Walter, Partner, Osney Capital 

• Simon Shiu, Visiting Professor of Cyber Security, University of Bristol 

• Naula Kilmartin, Innovation Lead for Cyber Security and Resilience, Innovate UK  

• Hannah Rutter MBE, Deputy Director, Cyber Security and Resilience, Department for Culture, Media and Sport 

• Daniel Shiu, Cryptomathematics Professor, University of Manchester 

• Diane Gilbert, Senior Innovation Lead, Programmes, Plexal 

• Andrea Cullen, Co-Founder, CAPSLOCK 

• Aurorah Cheney Smith, Director of Commercial Strategy & Growth, One Advanced and Founder, Guardian Compass  

• Macin Roth, Head of Information Security, iD Mobile 

• Catherine O’Keefe, Deputy Director of Cyber Operations, NHS England 

techUK's Cyber Innovator 2026 announced!  

Celebrating its eighth year, the Cyber Innovation Den pitching competition showcased pioneering SMEs and start-ups presenting innovative solutions to secure our supply chains before an esteemed panel of judges, including Aurorah Cheney Smith, Saba Ahmed, Marcin Roth and Catherine O’Keefe. 

The standard of pitches this year made deciding the winner more challenging than ever. Cavero Secure was named Cyber Innovator 2026, with the judges praising how its pitch brought together identity and supply chain security, combining real-time monitoring with quantum resilient key rotation and showing strong potential to scale. Congratulations again to Cavero Secure and Professor Ben Varcoe for a brilliant pitch! 

 You can watch Cavero Secure’s pitch here

_____________________________________________________________________ 

“For me, this event is all about connections and relationships. Meeting new people doing innovative and exciting stuff - all as part of the same mission. I met Louis Holt two years ago when he won the event pitching ESProfiler, and we’re now working with them on client projects”. 

James Hampshire, Partner, Baringa 

_____________________________________________________________________ 

You can find more information about the Den and our nine other pitches below in our dedicated pitching competition section below. 

Theme 1 - Securing supply chains in an evolving threat landscape 

Supply chain security is no longer a procurement exercise; it is a question of business continuity, economic resilience and national resilience. 

The discussion explored how supply chains have evolved beyond suppliers and contractors to include cloud providers, AI models, identity providers and increasingly autonomous AI agents. Organisations are now defined by the resilience of the ecosystem they depend on, yet dependence on third parties is outpacing visibility of the risk. With state actors increasingly targeting critical national infrastructure through its suppliers, the question is no longer who owns a system, but who society depends on. Founders were reminded that every startup is a dependency for others, so security must be built in from day one, because trust is part of the product.  

Theme 2 – Investment and growth trends in cyber  

Supply chain security was highlighted as a growing commercial opportunity. Annual supplier assessments are giving way to continuous approaches, and policy such as the Cyber Resilience Pledge and NCSC guidance is driving demand. The UK is increasingly seen as a launchpad for globally relevant category winners, with Innovate UK shifting its focus towards identifying and backing high-potential growth companies. AI is reshaping what investors look for. With building now democratised, technology alone is no longer a moat, and distribution, founder DNA and a compelling story rooted in real buyer pain have become the key differentiators. Looking to government, there were calls for a dedicated Cyber Growth Leader, and a reminder that the growth of the UK cyber sector and the resilience of the UK are deeply connected. 

Theme 3 – Government's perspective on cyber growth  

Cyber security is no longer seen as a technical add-on; it is now recognised as fundamental to both the UK’s national security and its economic prosperity. 

Government reaffirmed that its commitment to cyber is unchanged following its move to DCMS, with the National Cyber Action Plan expected. techUK continues to provide the platform  for industry and government engagement.  

Theme 4 – From innovation to scale: what SMEs need to grow 

For SMEs looking to grow, past winners and ecosystem leaders shared a clear lesson: scaling is not about doing more of the same, but about clarity on the problem you solve and who needs it solved. 

Former winners highlighted the value of focusing on one clear, topical problem rather than trying to solve everything at once. As the ecosystem matures, support for SMEs is shifting beyond early stage validation towards customer acquisition, talent, adoption and leadership, with programmes increasingly focused on design partnerships and government procurement. Early customer trials were seen as the strongest form of validation, and networks were valued for the challenge they bring, with the reminder that a quick no is often better than a slow yes. On investment, early backers invest in the team and its potential while later rounds demand proof, so SMEs should not feel pressure to skip the proving stages. SMEs were also encouraged to build diversity in early, when it is easiest, by championing reskilling and looking beyond traditional talent pools. 

The Cyber Innovation Den pitching competition – watch the pitches here! 

AequusTech’s integrity layer for physical AI uses physics and causal AI to verify whether the data an automated system is about to act on is physically possible, detecting spoofed sensors and compromised updates across critical infrastructure such as water utilities and hospitals. 

Breachline’s AI security engineer, Nebula, continuously tests systems and presents its findings in plain language, helping businesses without in-house security teams secure themselves and their suppliers. 

CyberSiARA’s cloud-based platform uses behavioural biometrics to verify who is behind every online request, distinguishing legitimate users from bots, AI agents and attackers using stolen credentials, without collecting personal information. 

Ossprey’s software supply chain security platform detects malicious open source packages within minutes of publication, plugging into existing developer workflows to give engineers a simple stop or go decision on the code they use. 

RateYourCyber’s governance, risk and compliance platform combines structured data and deterministic logic with AI to translate cyber and supply chain risk into clear, quantified business impact for critical infrastructure operators. 

OTShield’s deception-first security platform deploys realistic, self-configuring decoys across OT and SCADA environments, detecting attackers before they reach the systems that run energy, water and manufacturing. 

Teleformation’s application delivery controller, Parrera, combines firewall, DDoS protection, bot control and load balancing in one package, using a small language model to re-examine suspicious traffic and automatically block attacks that conventional firewalls miss. 

Tikos’ AI assurance technology detects prompt injection attacks from inside the model itself rather than relying on input guardrails, enabling organisations to identify novel attacks against their AI agents however they are phrased. 

If you’d like to find out more about techUK’s Cyber Resilience Programme, our helpful Cyber SME Forum and how you can get involved with both, please do get in touch!