The UK’s cyber ecosystem and technology leadership 16. The UK’s approach to building its cyber power has included concerted efforts to develop the country’s cyber skills base and commercial capabilities, with the UK government and the devolved governments of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales working in partnership and learning from each other. The UK cyber security sector is growing fast, with over 1400 businesses generating revenues of £8.9 billion last year, supporting 46,700 skilled jobs, and attracting significant overseas investment. This sector is vital to our cyber power, supporting our security, and international influence and economic growth. We have consolidated the UK’s reputation as a global leader in cyber security research, with 19 academic centres of excellence and 4 research institutes tackling our most pressing cyber security challenges. 17. The cyber security sector workforce has grown by around 50% in the last four years, with demand for skills often outstripping supply. We have engaged extensively with industry, professional organisations, students, employers, existing cyber security professionals and academia to better understand the nature of the cyber security skills challenge. We have made a wide range of extracurricular initiatives available to inspire young people to pursue a career in cyber security. From 2019 to 2020, we involved close to 57,000 young people in our CyberFirst and Cyber Discovery learning programmes. We extended our courses to reach younger students and the CyberFirst Girls’ competition online attracted 11,900 girls, with the top teams competing 2 simultaneously at 18 venues across the UK. Our CyberFirst bursary programme has attracted highly motivated, talented undergraduates. Last year there were 750 students in the scheme and all 56 graduates were in full-time cyber security roles. 18. Despite these interventions the wider skills pipeline still remains a significant challenge: of the 1.32 million businesses in the wider economy, around 50% still report a basic technical cyber security skills gap.2 And although the UK cyber security sector has grown rapidly, most companies are startups and building large scale domestic vendors remains challenging in the face of international consolidation. As the experience with 5G has shown, the UK and our allies do not have a leading position in some key areas of the wider technology industry. Countries that are able to establish a leading role in the technologies critical to cyber power will be better positioned to influence the way they are designed and deployed, more able to protect their security and economic advantage, and quicker to exploit opportunities for breakthroughs in cyber capabilities. The UK’s cyber resilience 19. Over the last decade we have delivered a wide range of interventions aimed at strengthening the UK’s cyber resilience. This has been possible thanks to the significant and sustained investment in some of our core cyber capabilities, including the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), law enforcement and our security and policy professionals across government, as well as our expanding domestic and international partnerships. DCMS, Cyber security skills in the UK labour market 2021 (2021) 21