Manchester has usurped London and other cities as the UK’s leading source of cyber talent.
That’s according to the CEO of a high-growth MSSP that has relocated there, ahead of a cyber hiring spree designed to boost headcount from 30 to 75 staff.
Serial entrepreneur Matt Lovell founded Microsoft Sentinel specialist CloudGuard in 2020, alongside Javid Khan.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen, Pulsant and Centiq alumni Lovell said relocating CloudGuard’s base from London to the North West would improve its access to top cybersecurity talent.
“I moved to Manchester 18 months ago, largely because my wife is from Manchester and I promised her we would move back,” he said.
“For me, Manchester has over that period of time, and even before that, become the leader in cyber security talent in the UK. And there are some big competitors in London, Belfast and Newcastle – not to forget Leeds.
“I see the talent pool as being one of the biggest problems [the industry] has to collectively solve. Manchester has fantastic universities and school feeders and fantastic capabilities for apprenticeships. We’ve obviously got GCHQ here now and the cyber community in the North West is the strongest in the UK.”
The Manchester cyber scene was given a shot in the arm in September when locally based cybersecurity services powerhouse NCC Group was handed an enormous contract with TikTok.
ANS is among the other notable tech businesses based in the city with a strong cyber bent, as well as cybersecurity VAD Distology.
“NCC are the biggest by far and are recruiting heavily for their engagement with TikTok in the Manchester area,” Lovell said.
“I think it’s one of the biggest single cyber awards outside of UK government in the country.”
“I see us being a business of at least 75 people”
Having first met at Pulsant, Lovell and Khan opted to rekindle their partnership in 2020, a year after Microsoft leapt into the SIEM market with Sentinel.
“We’d worked together before and recognised that there was an increasingly challenging problem emerging for SMEs around being able to afford enterprise-grade security protection that constantly monitors, responds to, and resolves the problems,” he said.
“So we set about building an automation platform on what was then a brand new technology Microsoft had launched.
“Four years on, we’re one of the leaders in terms of automation of the Microsoft Sentinel security stack, and have a range of services that wrap around that to help protect and constantly update SME organisations’ cyber security.”
CloudGuard’s clients range from 25 to 2,500 employees in size, with a sweet spot of 100-500 seats.
The company is hunting experienced SOC and SIEM specialists, as well as consultants, Lovell explained.
“We’re still a remote working business primarily, but I would see us being a business of at least 75 people in the next two to three years. At least half of those [additional staff] – so 20-25 heads – will be in the Manchester area,” he concluded.
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
