Tag Archives: cyber

A Brief History of the Term Cyber (Meaning Cybersecurity)

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This article explores how the word cyber evolved from its academic roots in cybernetics to its current role as shorthand for cybersecurity. It traces the rise of cyberpunk fiction, the growing association with digital threats in the 1990s, and how UK policy frameworks adopted and institutionalised the term, culminating in the creation of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). From Greek etymology to modern geopolitics, cyber has shifted from describing control to denoting risk.

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Scaling Cyber: A Startup Founder’s Journey from Idea to Exit

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This virtual book is a guide to the entrepreneurial journey, drawn from real-world experiences in cyber startups. It distils insights from my time on the NCSC for Startups accelerator (cohort 13, 2023), the DSIT Cyber Runway Scale programme (2024/2025), and my mentoring on DSIT’s Cyber ASAP programme. It’s a collection of lessons, reflections, and hard-earned knowledge from the founders, investors, and industry leaders I’ve met along the way. Thanks to Marcel Duchamp you can think of it as a “ready made”, a curated work built from my blog articles, assembled to help you navigate the path from startup to scale, and beyond.

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More Cyber Bollocks: Cutting Through the Hype, Fear, and Nonsense in Cybersecurity

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If there’s one thing the cybersecurity industry is never short on, it’s hype and a healthy dose of fear-mongering. Every week, there’s a new headline screaming about the latest cyber apocalypse: hackers are about to steal your identity, ransomware is going to shut down your city, and a nation-state might be spying on you through your toaster. It’s all part of the relentless barrage of cyber bollocks that we’ve become accustomed to.

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