Sunday, May 22, 2022

Attention Spy Guys and Spy Gals (also VC's and entrepreneurs): Britain's GCHQ In-Q-Tel Type Investment Scheme

From Sifted: 

Inside GCHQ’s startup programme
The UK's cybersecurity and intelligence agency GCHQ is on a mission — and has appeared to be since the Snowden leaks in 2013 — to shift its public image away from secretive agency

From the outside, the headquarters of GCHQ — the UK’s cybersecurity and intelligence agency — looks exactly how you’d expect: barbed wire fences and security checkpoints.

But once you’re inside, things start to feel a lot less James Bond and more like a giant shopping centre. 

There’s a Greggs bakery (the baristas have security clearances) and, next to it, the UK’s largest top-secret garden, complete with stripey beach-style deckchairs. 

GCHQ is on a mission — and has been since the Snowden leaks in 2013-14 revealed that it had been harvesting information of people the world over — to convey an increasingly open image; to try and shift its public perception away from secretive agency and towards ally of the public in the fight against cybercrime. 

A key part of that: partnering with young startups and inviting them in for mentoring.

“The halo effect” 
The part of GCHQ that runs the startup programme is the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). It opened a couple of years after the Snowden leaks and works on computer security threats.

Five companies have just joined this year’s programme, the focus of which is on ransomware. It’s a fitting theme — GCHQ’s director warned last week that countries opposing Russia will see an increase in cyber attacks after the invasion of Ukraine. 

GCHQ's doughnut in Cheltenham, England

 GCHQ’s doughnut-shaped headquarters in Cheltenham, England

....MUCH MORE

Is it a doughnut or is it a panopticon?

HT: Izabella Kaminska on Twitter where she now seems to be bragging about paramilitary operations in Hyde Park.

Which makes sense, in light of her checking sources and brushing up on armament identification:
"But it wasn't a tank, it was a 9K35 Strela-10 anti-aircraft vehicle..."