What exactly is a Soft Landing Programme? Find out at the October Cluster meeting!
Exploring business opportunities in another country is hard work. Combine communication challenges and cultural differences then add a wide variety of stumbling blocks such as visas, free trade zones, financial climates, business legal & regulatory dictates, immigration, accommodation, travel etc. and this process can be overwhelming.
Businesses support organisations and networking groups all over the world recognise the importance of exporting and/or inward investment to their members, their sectors, their industry and ultimately their national economy. When the subject matter is cyber security, the stakes are even higher because the adversary respects no borders and it is only through people and organisations from all over the world working together that we can hope to keep up with and gain the upper hand over malicious actors and the technologies they exploit.
This is where the concept of Soft Landing comes into it's own!
It is very disappointing therefore to find so few tailored soft landing programmes that are openly available to the people and organisations who need them.
Cyber Wales was not alone in forming its own version of a soft landing programme when we began back in 2014. As we got to know other cyber ecosystems around the world, we found that many had also created their own programmes but the disparities between the formats and offerings, as well as the difficulties in communicating the offerings from country to country made it very difficult to maximise the benefits of these programmes.
This is one of the key challenges that GlobalEPIC focused on after its formation in 2017 and today there exists a global network of cyber ecosystems who have aligned their soft landing programmes around a common framework making it as easy as possbile for people and organisations to find, explore, work, conduct research and collaborate with like-minded cyber professionals all over the world.
14 cyber security ecosystems stood together on stage at the 3rd European Cybersecurity Forum held in Krakow, Poland and became the founding members of the Global Ecosystem of ecosystems Partnership in Innovation and Cybersecurity (GlobalEPIC).
The organisation was founded to build a global community of innovation ecosystems who collaborate on projects and share expertise through an ever expanding network of diverse organizations all committed to "Network Globally, Benefit Locally".
Cyber Wales took pride of place at the launch, standing alongside a friend and colleague from Invest Surrey, committed to the development of cyber capability and resilience from its HQ in the City of Surrey in British Columbia, just across the Fraser River from Vancouver and sharing a border with the US State of Washington..
The City of Surrey is able to function as a "living Lab" for cyber innovation and its location makes it an ideal launchpad for business opportunities and/or research collaboration with the major North American cyber epicentres.
We are absolutely delighted to be joining with this amazing team from Canada to provide more information about the GlobalEPIC Soft Landing Programme that we have each been running in our ecosystems since 2018.
Join the All Wales Cyber Security Cluster October meeting for this very special session, to:-
- Meet our friends from Canada;
- Learn more about the opportunities the ecosystem of ecosystem brings; and
- Find out what the Soft Landing programme offers to people and/or organisations
Register to join the event remotely