Safety tech firms get £350k boost to tackle ‘plague’ of online child abuse
Safety tech firms are set to receive a £350,000 investment to help tackle the “plague” of online child abuse.
Researchers have revealed UK firms boast a 25 per cent market share of the global safety tech sector, as three UK start-ups win government cash to rocket power their innovation.
Tech minister Paul Scully said: “The sharing of child sexual abuse material is a plague in the deepest and darkest parts of the internet– we will put a stop to this abhorrent behaviour.”
He told City PM the government “is absolutely dedicated to making the UK the safest place to be online” and said the private sector would play “a huge role” in delivering that ambition.
It comes as the government prepares to deliver the Online Safety Bill in a further bid to regulate big tech firms to keep users and children safe in the digital realm.
Sector revenue has grown by 20 per cent in the last year, and is on track to hit £1bn by the mid 2020s, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) estimates, while it has secured £64m in investment in the last year alone.
UK safety tech, which develops solutions to keep people safe online, now employs 3,300 people across 130 firms, a 16 per cent rise, as per the Safety Tech Sector 2023 analysis.
Scully added: “With a quarter of the world’s safety tech firms thriving in the UK, it’s a shining example of the rapid progress we are making to becoming a tech superpower by 2030.”
The firms set to benefit from DSIT’s safety tech challenge fund, run with the Home Office and GCHQ, are: the Centre for Factories of the Future, for their ‘CSAM Guard’ tool; Vistalworks; and CameraForensics.
Projects will get cash from Innovate UK and run until 2024 before presenting results on how their tools can detect and disrupt the sharing of child sexual abuse material links.
Will Dury, director of Innovate UK, said the UK was home to “some of the world’s most innovative companies” which could help “our digital sector benefit the economy and society”.
Ian Stevenson, head of the Online Safety Tech Industry Association (OSTIA), said the funds would help companies “face headwinds from the challenging macro investment landscape”.
He added: “I expect to see the rapidly changing regulatory environment in the UK and elsewhere driving growth in the sector globally in the next few years.”