Hi, or should we say “Hola” or even “Konnichiwa”

We’ve been busy here at Digital Shadows, busy in Spain, busy in Japan and busy with our day jobs too.

We see our purpose as reducing the dangers companies expose themselves to in the face of the positive innovations of our age, such as: social media (and the exponential growth of), the emergence of a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) culture, cloud computing and a consequent rapid growth in the volume of corporate and company related information online.

So, we were very pleased to see these same innovations, trends and their consequences discussed in detail at a global level among CIOs and senior IT execs at Gartners’ Symposium/ITxpo, early in November, in Barcelona.  Gartner’s nexus of forces is “the convergence and mutual reinforcement of social, mobility, cloud and information patterns that drive new business scenarios.”   www.gartner.com/technology/research/nexus-of-forces

Sagrada Família

Of course this has been mooted for years, but this was the first time we saw the security angles played up in the keynote address and all of the CIOs taking note.  Exciting times for us as a result.

We’ve also been in Osaka, Japan – competing as finalists in the Innotribe Start Up Challenge.  Innotribe is SWIFT’s excellently-run initiative to enable collaborative innovation in financial services. Earlier this year, we were delighted to win the European leg of the competition, gaining the title of “Top Startup” for our innovations in cyber security.  While we did not emerge victorious from the final event in Japan, the experience of participating in Japan was amazing; meeting and connecting with a remarkable group of high quality, diverse start ups from around the world. Japan itself was a joy too, what with all that good food, and the fanciest toilets on earth!

Sibos

Meanwhile, back in UK, our business as usual remains constant with the Digital Shadows monitoring platform continuously scanning over 50 million sources of social media in 21 different languages, watching hacker forums and looking for our clients’ confidential information unintentionally released into the public (or hacker accessible) domain.

It’s good to be back home. We’re coping just fine with the winter weather – the heating at Innovation Warehouse has kicked in and we’re feeling toasty.

We are very pleased to announce that we have been awarded the runners-up spot in Cisco’s British Innovation Gateway awards 2012.   Our generous prize includes $25k and 12 month packages of business support from Cisco and legal advice from top law firm Bird & Bird.

It’s an honour to have the ‘silver medal’ in such a tough field of over 300 entrants and a live Dragon’s Den-style final pitching event.

We would like to say a big thank you to everyone who supported us and in particular to Cisco for this fantastic opportunity.

We are delighted to announce that we have won the European leg of SWIFT’s Innotribe Startup Challenge in Belfast. We were surprised and delighted to be named the ‘top startup’ and it’s a great honour for us.  Next stop Osaka for the world final!

We had a fantastic time and met some excellent people.  The competition was tough and it was a well fought contest.  I have to say that of all of the startup competitions we have been a part of this has to be amongst the most professionally run with genuinely excellent advice and top-tier attendees.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank SWIFT, the other competitors and all of the attendees who voted for us.  Hopefully we will see some of you in Osaka in October.

There is more coverage of the event on Forbes and Chris Skinner’s excellent Financial Services Club Blog.

We are pleased to announce that we have been selected as semi-finalists for the Innotribe Startup Challenge as one of the most promising financial technology and financial services startups. On 14^th June, Digital Shadows will compete against 14 other startups at Innotribe Challenge Showcase in Belfast to secure a place as a finalist for the $50,000 grand prize and on-going support from SWIFT to grow our business.

Innotribe is SWIFT’s initiative to foster collaborative innovation in financial services and a panel of industry experts selected 15 semi-finalists from hundreds of applications to enter the Challenge.

The winners of the European Startup Challenge Showcase in Belfast will be invited to SIBOS in Osaka to compete for the $50,000 prize against other finalists from the New York and Singapore Challenge Showcases.

We would like to thank SWIFT for this opportunity.  For further information about the Innotribe Startup Challenge, please visit: http://innotribestartup.com/

We are delighted to have been selected from hundreds of applicants as semi-finalists for the prestigious Cisco BIG Awards.

“With over $200,000 in prizes, the BIG Awards is an annual open innovation competition to discover and reward the finest examples of the UK’s most innovative start-ups.”

You can read all about it and support us here.

Many thanks to the organisers of TechPitch4.5.  We had a great time there this week and met many excellent people.  Thanks to all of those who voted for us – it was much appreciated.  Hopefully we will catch up with you again in the New Year.  Exciting times are ahead.

The new edition of World Defence Systems features an article co-authored by Digital Shadows.

In the article we argue alongside Dr Christopher Hobbs, an expert in OSINT from Kings College London, that organisations can lower their risk of cyber attack by first understanding the vulnerabilities in their digital shadow, then taking steps to regain control of the information they expose online.

The full article is viewable online here.