LORCA adds more female and BAME entrepreneurs to its cohort

The London Office for Rapid Cyber Security Advancement (LORCA) has added 17 more UK startups to its cyber security hub.

The recruitment for its fifth cohort has been carried out virtually, due to the outbreak of the coronavirus.

The startups added include a large proportion of companies founded by female and BAME entrepreneurs. The organisation encouraged applications from under-represented founders, and 18% of its fifth cohort includes scaleups with female founders or CEOs and 18% with leaders from BAME backgrounds.

"We have members from across the UK and international cyber hubs, while several of the members in our fifth cohort are led by women and BAME founders," said Saj Huq, director, LORCA. "But there is still much more for the UK's cyber community to do to ensure solutions are being created by diverse innovators."

LORCA announced an open call in March for startups with solutions to challenges presented by a connected society. this included supply chain security, digital identity and the digital risk associated with an increasingly connected world. The 17 startups selected have innovative services that relate to identity, IoT, cloud security, autonomous cyber defence, privacy and more.

"The arrival of our fifth cohort highlights that there is world-leading talent and cutting-edge technology available to address these challenges and enable secure, societal-wide digital transformation," Huq added. "LORCA intends to support these companies by helping them scale in the UK and international markets and achieve a closer product-market fit.

"LORCA has exceeded the initial targets set by the government and provided an unparalleled platform for collaboration in the cyber ecosystem, which has matured and grown at a staggering rate. We intend to continue supporting scaling companies, acting as a catalyst for collaboration between innovators and critical parts of the ecosystem such as investors, industry, academia and government."

The selected startups include AdvSTAR, a global threat intelligence service, Breachlock, a SaaS platform for both automated and manual security testing, and Truststamp, an AI-based privacy company that focuses on the data identity.

The full list can be seen here.