Key Highlights

• The Northwest hosts the second largest cyber cluster in the UK with the second largest levels of investment (London and South-East being number 1).
• The Northwest has a well-established cyber ecosystem and has become a ‘destination of choice’ for a number of related large private and public secor organisations, including: Raytheon, BAE (AI), Northrop Grumann Deloitte, PWC, KPMG, Sophos Darktrace, AON, GCHQ, NCF.
• The NW has ~300 unique cyber security companies: 23% are large, 12% medium, 24% small, and 41% micro;
• There are currently c.12,000 FTEs working in cyber security in the NW generating £760M in Gross Value Added (GVA) each year. Estimates suggest the region should be aiming to grow this to at least 30,000 FTEs by 2035 - unlocking unlock up to £2.7Bn GVA per annum.
• The NW is cited as the ‘heart of the UK’s national defence and security ecosystem’ sustaining c.35,000 related jobs across the region;

There are also over 150 public, defence, and research assets identified across the North West (e.g. business clusters in Greater Manchester (GM), research excellence in Lancaster, upcoming National Cyber Force (NCF) / innovation in Samlesbury, cyber degree apprenticeships in Sellafield, High Performance Computing (HPC) capabilities in Hartree Centre at Daresbury etc, Smart Cities in Liverpool City Region (LCR) etc).

52% of cyber security companies are ‘pure-play’ (i.e. only provide cyber security e.g. NCC Group, Darktrace, Avecto, WithSecure, ProofID, Secarma), and 48% are ‘diversified’ and offer products and services across several verticals. This is much higher than the UK study (28% diversified) which highlights how strongly cyber security capabilities are embedded within broader sectors in the North West (e.g. with providers such as BAE Systems, BT, Cisco, Deloitte, PwC, Accenture, Ericsson, Thales, Capgemini, ARM, Raytheon). Over a third of cyber security employers are either large (250+ staff) or medium (50+ staff). This suggests opportunity to build the skills pipeline through entry-level pathways into cyber among key employers, including the NCF and NCSC.