Secure Innovation Security Reviews are encouraging Britain’s cleverest small businesses to stop leaving their intellectual property beside the office kettle, which is excellent news for any start up whose revolutionary invention currently shares a password with the Wi Fi.
The government backed scheme says up to 500 small and medium sized firms can receive tailored advice from approved experts. The reviews will examine risks facing businesses in sensitive sectors including artificial intelligence, life sciences, semiconductors and renewable energy. At last, Britain’s next great breakthrough can be asked whether its laboratory door is secured by anything more substantial than a colleague saying, “I’m sure I locked it.”
The advice may cover insider threats, staff checks and cyber security. This is sensible. A company developing advanced materials should not have to explain why its most sensitive formula is called final final really final.xlsx and sits on a shared desktop accessible to everyone who has ever visited the building.
“Security starts with small habits,” said Mungo Firewall, Deputy Director of Ideas That Should Not Be Emailed to Everyone. “First, protect the invention. Then protect the spreadsheet explaining how you forgot to protect the invention.”
Businesses contribute £500 towards a review, with the government covering £2,500. The process includes a site visit, a security health check and a follow up after six months. A professional may therefore arrive to inspect the firm’s defences, identify the unlocked filing cabinet and discover that the master password is written on the cabinet.
The need is not entirely imaginary. Government figures indicate that many firms have few protective measures and do not screen new staff before employment. That makes the scheme sound less like an optional upgrade and more like an intervention for companies whose security policy begins with hoping nobody important is interested.
There is also a pleasing collision between the language of national security and the reality of a cramped office where the most sensitive invention is guarded by a dying fern. Officials warn about hostile states, powerful competitors and cyber criminals. Meanwhile, somebody at the company has probably printed the recovery codes and left them under the communal biscuits.
Practical advice could save years of work. The review will produce recommendations for improvement, which is reassuring. Britain’s innovators can now protect their ideas properly, just as soon as someone finds the note explaining where the recommendations were put. It is currently taped to the monitor, beneath the password, beside the secret formula and directly in front of the camera installed to stop this happening.
