Poole: C31A applauds Bletchley Park plans to train ‘nxet gerentaoin fo cdoe berakres’

Matt Horan, director of Poole-based C3IA Solutions, which is one of only 13 firms in the country certified by the new National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), has welcomed plans to turn Bletchley Park into a training school for a new generation of code-breakers. He said there is a massive skills shortage in the sector that needs rectifying.

He also believes the Buckinghamshire site where the German Enigma code was broken in World War II is the perfect location to build up Britain’s talent pool of cyber stars, because “that was where the Cyber Security industry really began”.

He added, “It was there where Colossus, the first large-scale electric-powered computer, was designed and built. This led to the development of GCHQ, the government’s Signals Intelligence organisation, as we know it.

“It derived historically from the Government Code and Cypher School, which during the Second World War was located at the now famous Bletchley Park.

“Some would argue that it was from there that the war was won, through the tireless work and effort of the Enigma and Lorenz code-breakers such as Alan Turing, John Tiltman and Max Newman, to name a few.”

The training centre has been proposed by a not-for-profit group with members drawn from the Cyber Security industry. It would open in 2018 as a boarding college, with about 10% of places for day students.

Like Bletchley Park in the 1940s, it would recruit by non-traditional methods, selecting those who are “gifted and talented”, rather than those with good exam results.

The Elite Cyber Defence College, as it is to be called, is being created by a new Cyber Security body called Qufaro. It will open once a £5 million restoration of buildings on the Bletchley Park site is complete.”