As we become ever more interconnected and more and more aspects of our lives are conducted online, concerns have grown about the myriad of potential risks that this poses.
The situation has given rise to a thriving ‘safety tech’ industry, which aims to safeguard and protect users from harm of various kinds.
The UK Government says that it is committed to making the UK the safest place to go online in the world, which is why it has been monitoring this emerging sector via an annual Safety Tech Sector Analysis report.
The third such report highlights strong growth over the past 12 months and says that the sector is “going from strength to strength”.
There are now 115 businesses identified as providing these products and services in the UK, representing a growth of 17%.
These companies specialised in a range of different areas, including content filtering and moderation, the detection and prevention of fraud, age verification, digital forensics, and more.
The sector is now one of the fastest growing in the UK, with revenue increasing by more than a fifth (21%) over the past 12 months, hitting a total of £381m.
Employment in the safety tech sector rose by nearly a third
It is also providing more jobs, with the number of roles in the sector increasing by nearly a third (30%).
A total of 2,850 staff are now directly employed in the safety tech sector.
The majority of companies were located outside the capital, with 57% operating outside London and the South East.
The report noted that there were already existing hotspots of activity in areas including Leeds, Edinburgh and Manchester, with Greater Manchester, Oxford, Bristol and Belfast also emerging as areas of growth.
The future potential of this fast-growing sector is also being recognised, as it brought in a new record of more than £63m in outside equity investment.
Around half of this went to AI company Faculty and £15.2m to a company called SafeToNet, which uses AI and analytics to detect threats and protect children.
£5.8m went to an app called Vault Platform, which enables the reporting of workplace misconduct, and a further £5m went to Cyacomb, which works with global law enforcement agencies to put in measures to protect vulnerable children online.
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