Scotland’s digital trust centre to launch unique innovation challenges to make online world safer

That’s the focus of Scotland’s Digital TRUST Centre of Excellence, which is launching a unique industry-led innovation challenge to develop new digital trust technology solutions.

Hosted by Edinburgh Napier University (ENU) along with the University of Edinburgh and University of Glasgow, the centre was set up in January 2025 to make the digital world safer and more resilient.

And now they’re about to launch their first innovation challenge, thanks to funding from Scottish Enterprise.

The standout idea (or ideas) will be selected to receive up to £50,000 of funding and tailored support through the incubation programme and the centre’s CEO Peter Ferry says the challenge, which is just the first of several open, industry-led innovation calls over the next 18 months, will open doors for the successful organisations or teams. “The winners will be able to access funding, accelerated development and ready customers. The global financial system is transforming itself, so this is a really opportune moment to develop the technologies needed for the global economy.”

Demystifying the technology we use everyday

Created in partnership with FinTech Scotland, the centre aims to spend its first two years focusing on practical research and training to help industries tackle challenges in areas like digital payments, digital assets and online identity.

So what exactly is digital trust? Cryptography - which encrypts communications to keep them confidential - keeps the internet safe, explains Peter: without it, nothing works.

Part of the centre’s mission is to help us all understand the impact these technologies have on our daily lives. “Digital trust is a collective term for those technologies that let us trust another party online and verify that party and what they're doing in the digital world. They're incredibly important to get right, so that all the things that we use, like making payments in the financial world or logging on with our digital identity to a government service, work properly."

A global leader in digital trust innovation

Under the helm of director Professor Bill Buchanan from ENU’s School of Computing, Engineering & the Built Environment, the centre is helping to position Scotland at the forefront of global digital trust innovation, supporting sectors ranging from finance to healthcare to make the digital world we all experience safer and more efficient.

It builds on the expertise at the three universities, connecting research, policy, and real-world application to shape a digital economy “that is both trusted and transformative”. And its steering group includes heavy hitters in the Financial Services industry alongside experienced academics to ensure that new developments are useful to the sectors they are designed to serve.

“What we are trying to do is take these digital trust technologies and make them work for industries like financial services for payments and regulations, for example,” Peter says. “We are bringing about an innovation programme to make Scotland a great place to do this kind of innovation; we want it to be right up there as the European centre for this technology.”

‘Developments bring opportunities but also threats’

Rapid advances in computing technology are set to challenge existing approaches to digital trust, highlighting the critical role of the centre.

Quantum computing is poised to completely alter the technological landscape within the next decade; as Peter warns, the computers likely to emerge in the next ten years will be capable of breaking the codes that we use now.

“It is scary stuff because it doesn’t just mean that future communications will be exposed because the computers will be much more powerful; it also means that past communications that have been encrypted can be broken too.”

Here in Scotland, post-quantum cryptography, meaning cryptographic algorithms designed to be secure against both classical and quantum computers, is a strength and something that the centre will continue to focus its efforts on.

Seeking new ideas from agile start-ups

It’s exactly these types of threats that the new innovation challenges - which are the first of their kind in Scotland – are designed to combat. The series will kick off in September and run throughout 2026; the team want SMEs and start-ups to come up with solutions to the specific problems set by industry, which could range from payment innovation and tokenisation to privacy-aware methods and digital wallets.

“We need nimble companies to come up with new ideas, then take these ideas and make them work,” explains Peter. “Maybe not all of them will work, but unless you create an environment where you can bring these ideas out more quickly, we won’t remain at the vanguard of how these technologies are being developed and adopted.”

The successful applicant(s) can access up to £50,000 from Scottish Enterprise to develop their idea or prototype and demonstrate the innovation; they will also have a “fantastic platform” to showcase their work to large organisations and access their connections and knowledge.

To find out more about the theme of the first innovation challenge launching next week, visit coetrust.com/innovation-challenge-calls or follow regular updates at https://www.linkedin.com/company/coetrust/