Brexit Britain will miss out on EU's €1.8 billion cybersecurity funding

Companies in the UK are set to miss out on a wad of cash being made available by the EU for investment in cyber security over the next four years.

The 1.8 billion (1.5 billion) of expected investment will come as a result of a new public-private partnership and is part of a set of new initiatives to improve European resilience against cyber attacks. The EU will provide 450 million of the 1.8 billion as part of its Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

The initiative comes, in part, from research showing at least 80 per cent of European companies have suffered at least one cyber security incident in the past 12 months, with the number of these incidents climbing by 38 per cent in 2015.

Andrus Ansip, VP for the Digital Single Market at the EU, said: "Europe has to be ready to tackle cyber-threats that are increasingly sophisticated and do not recognise borders. Today, we are proposing concrete measures to strengthen Europe's resilience against such attacks and secure the capacity needed for building and expanding our digital economy."

However, due to the result of the UK referendum on its membership of the European Union, companies here will almost certainly miss out on this funding.

Kevin Bocek, chief security strategist at cyber security firm Venafi, said: "It's good to see the EU increasing funding and making cybersecurity a top priority, but sad given Brexit UK universities and companies will be set to lose out on the investment."