Secure Innovation: The Prerequisite for Resilient Digital Trade
Emerging technologies are reshaping global trade, and businesses are racing to harness the opportunities.
Here is the uncomfortable truth:
“No trade agreement, tech alliance, or AI-powered platform is future-ready if it ignores security. You cannot future-proof trade if you do not secure the innovation that drives it.”
Cybersecurity, physical security, IP protection, and insider threat management are not optional extras. They are foundational to trust, investment, and strategic advantage in digital trade.
Trade Opportunities and Their Exposure
AI is powering trading finance. Quantum is nearing real-world impact. The next era of digital trade is built on emerging technologies; however, innovation constantly exposes new attack surfaces:
Intellectual property, such as proprietary algorithms, models, and code repositories, is a prime target for theft, cloning, or reverse engineering.
Sensitive AI training data and datasets can be tampered with, subtly corrupting outputs and undermining trust.
Advances in Quantum technology threaten to dismantle today’s encryption, leaving high-value IP and trade secrets exposed. There will be a time when Quantum Tech will make today's encryption look like a sandcastle in a tsunami.
Collaborative R&D and cross-border partnerships often lack consistent controls, opening doors to insider threats, unauthorised access, and IP leakage. How well do you know who is working for you remotely halfway across the world?
Business-critical assets are progressively becoming digital, which is inherently making them more vulnerable to attacks.
If you fail to secure your innovations from the outset, you are not protecting your future trade position.
The UK’s Secure Innovation guidance, developed by the NPSA and NCSC, outlines a clear framework to help tech firms protect their most sensitive work from the start.
Key principles include:
Identify What Needs Protecting
Identify the intellectual property, data, and emerging technologies that adversaries would target. Assume interest, even if you have not scaled yet.
Establish Clear Security Ownership
Security is not just a technical task; it must be owned at the executive level, with defined accountability across the business, regardless of what you outsource.
Secure People and Systems
Your developers, researchers, and partners are often the primary attack targets. Vet personnel monitor behaviours and enforce least privilege access.
Protect Intellectual Property
Secure your code, designs, and research from creation through to deployment. Embed access controls, encrypt assets, and use secure development practices.
Prepare for Commercial Scale
Build security into your business model from supplier terms and investor due diligence to export controls and global partnerships.
Why does it matter?
Digital trust is becoming a condition of market access.
As the UK expands its trade portfolio, signing digital trade agreements, forming Artificial Intelligence alliances, and participating in multilateral forums, organisations that can demonstrate secure innovation will move faster and further.
Investors, partners, and regulators increasingly demand assurance, not just ambition.
Without it, businesses risk being excluded from sensitive deals, restricted by export rules, or undercut by more trusted competitors.
Five Ways UK Tech Businesses Can Get Ahead
Make Security a Feature of Innovation
Position your security posture as part of your value proposition, especially in AI, quantum, and sensitive IP environments.
Use Assurance as a Market Signal
Demonstrate adherence to Secure Innovation principles, industry certifications, and proactive threat management.
Educate Investors and Partners
Build awareness of security risks and requirements among VCs, supply chain stakeholders, and collaborators.
Embed Security in International Strategy
Apply export controls, vet international partners & stakeholders, and align with country regulations before they become blockers.
Contribute to Ecosystem Maturity
Share lessons learned, participate in standards development, and engage with business forums and trade bodies to raise the bar.
Innovation Without Security is Risk at Scale
The next generation of digital trade will be fuelled by edge technologies. Only the organisations that secure their innovation from day one will be trusted to lead.
UK firms have an opportunity to establish a global standard by not just developing transformative technologies but also protecting them with equal intensity.
This is no longer a compliance issue!
It is a marker of credibility, competitiveness, and commercial readiness on a global scale.
Get in Touch
If you are developing or scaling emerging tech and want to sense-check your security posture or just want to have a chat about your current initiatives, please feel free to reach out.
Additionally, we are able to support funded assessments through available grants for reviews aligned to assurance schemes such as Cyber Essentials and the NPSA/NCSC Secure Innovation framework for eligible businesses.
If this is something you may be interested in, please get in touch.
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Sabina Ciofu is Associate Director – International, running the International Policy and Trade Programme at techUK.
Based in Brussels, she leads our EU policy and engagement. She is also our lead on international trade policy, with a focus on digital trade chapter in FTAs, regulatory cooperation as well as broader engagement with the G7, G20, WTO and OECD.
As a transatlanticist at heart, Sabina is a GMF Marshall Memorial fellow and issue-lead on the EU-US Trade and Technology Council, within DigitalEurope.
Previously, she worked as Policy Advisor to a Member of the European Parliament for almost a decade, where she specialised in tech regulation, international trade and EU-US relations.
Sabina loves building communities and bringing people together. She is the founder of the Gentlewomen’s Club and co-organiser of the Young Professionals in Digital Policy. Previously, as a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Community, she led several youth civic engagement and gender equality projects.
She sits on the Advisory Board of the University College London European Institute, Café Transatlantique, a network of women in transatlantic technology policy and The Nine, Brussels’ first members-only club designed for women.
Sabina holds an MA in War Studies from King’s College London and a BA in Classics from the University of Cambridge.
Policy Manager for International Policy and Trade, techUK
Daniel Clarke
Policy Manager for International Policy and Trade, techUK
Dan joined techUK as a Policy Manager for International Policy and Trade in March 2023.
Before techUK, Dan worked for data and consulting company GlobalData as an analyst of tech and geopolitics. He has also worked in public affairs, political polling, and has written freelance for the New Statesman and Investment Monitor.
Dan has a degree in MSc International Public Policy from University College London, and a BA Geography degree from the University of Sussex.
Outside of work, Dan is a big fan of football, cooking, going to see live music, and reading about international affairs.
Theo joined techUK in 2024 as EU Policy Manager. Based in Brussels, he works on our EU policy and engagement.
Theo is an experienced policy adviser who has helped connect EU and non-EU decision makers.
Prior to techUK, Theo worked at the EU delegation to Australia, the Israeli trade mission to the EU, and the City of London Corporation’s Brussels office. In his role, Theo ensures that techUK members are well-informed about EU policy, its origins, and its implications, while also facilitating valuable input to Brussels-based decision-makers.
Theo holds and LLM in International and European law, and an MA in European Studies, both from the University of Amsterdam.
Lewis' programmes cover a range of policy areas within Market Access (international trade regulation, sanctions and export controls, technical standards and product compliance, supply chains) and Consumer Tech (media and broadcast policy, consumer electronics, and connected home technology).
Prior to joining techUK, Lewis worked in government affairs and policy roles for international trade associations in Southeast Asia including the American Malaysian Chamber of Commerce and the European Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia.
He holds an undergraduate degree in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge and an MSc in Public Policy & Management from SOAS University of London.
Tess joined techUK as an Policy and Public Affairs Team Assistant in November of 2024. In this role, she supports areas such as administration, member communications and media content.
Before joining the Team, she gained experience working as an Intern in both campaign support for MPs and Councilors during the 2024 Local and General Election, and working for the Casimir Pulaski Foundation on defence and international secuirty. She has worked for multiple charities, on issues such as the climate crisis, educational inequality and Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG). In 2023, Tess obtained her Bachelors of Arts in Politics and International Relations from the University of Nottingham.
