An intensive cybersecurity bootcamp is among the successful recipients of more than $1 million in funding from the government’s Incubator Support program.
Industry minister Karen Andrews said on Tuesday that three businesses would be sharing in just over $1 million in funding to “help entrepreneurs turn their ideas into reality”.
The successful applicants are cybersecurity accelerator CyRise, Canobolas Ventures’ Sparklabs Cultiv8 Stretch project and Melt Accelerator’s hardware program.
The Incubator Support scheme, part of the wider Entrepreneurs’ Programme, has now invested $19.5 million into accelerators and incubators.
“Being innovation and embracing technology is essential for industry to continue to flourish and to create new jobs. These startups will be able to prototype, pilot and produce products, which can strengthen our cybersecurity capabilities, which presents many economic opportunities,” Ms Andrews said in a statement.
In this year’s federal budget, the Coalition cut a further $9.9 million from the Entrepreneurs’ Programme, while the Opposition had planned to slash its funding in half if it had won the election.
Melbourne-based cyber accelerator CyRise received $106,025 as part of the funding round to run a pilot of its cybersecurity bootcamps.
The company will be putting on three five-day intensive bootcamps in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra, targeted at individuals with a cybersecurity product idea looking to test it and turn it into a business.
“You just can’t learn startup skills from books, and we want to give Australia’s cyber community a way into startups with these bootcamps,” CyRise CEO Scott Handsaker told InnovationAus.com.
“It’s a massive endorsement of the work CyRise is already doing with startups in the Australian cybersecurity space,” he said.
“Cybersecurity is a massively growing global market, and this practical demonstration of supporting of home grown innovation is great. We have a strong pool of cybersecurity talent here in Australia. Creating opportunities for this talent to become founders is incredibly important.”
The bootcamps will be open to anyone in Australia, with a limited number of grants on offer for those travelling from outside of Melbourne, Sydney or Canberra.
“We selected these markets as we had clear evidence of community interest in these locations, which was an important part of the grant selection criteria,” Mr Handsaker said.
“As a pilot, we will be developing the content so that in the future a bootcamp can be rolled out anywhere in Australia, and participants can be confident of a world-class program delivery, regardless of location.”
Applications for the CyRise bootcamps will open in late August.
Do you know more? Contact James Riley via Email.