IT’S GOOD TO TALK. (And even better to listen).

Ever since UltraMAP launched, we’ve been learning. That’s one of the best parts, really. The world keeps changing – so our world (and yours) keeps changing too.

So when we had the opportunity to meet officials from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (“DCMS”) recently, we jumped at the chance.

Meet DCMS.

DCMS is the lead government department for the security and resilience of the UK’s digital infrastructure.

We discussed how UltraMAP go about protecting subsea infrastructure.

Such recognition is great for us.

We explained how we go about things. And we learned how some of the most forward thinking individuals, government departments and organisations were going about things too.

Common Ground.

Protecting the UK’s subsea infrastructure is important both politically and practically. Collectively, those that have influence have to protect, and be seen to be protecting, its integrity.

So it was great to exchange ideas about something that only really tends to surface as an issue when something goes wrong. Ironically, the better UltraMAP does, and the more government does, the less people talk about us.

The protection of subsea assets is that kind of a game.

The Nitty Gritty.

The headlines of our industry are, mostly, quite simple.

Intact cables work. Content travels and services continue to work. When cables break we have discontinuation of services and that’s when we hit the headlines.

We discussed the nitty gritty as well as the headlines. The behind the scenes things. This includes AIS (Automatic Identification System) policing, legislation and how industry and government work together with increasing clarity and efficiency.

We plan to meet again in the coming months. Between now and then we will garner thoughts, questions and insight from our team, our colleagues and our friends so the conversation is as broad as possible. This is not really about government and it is not really about UltraMAP. We are just the catalysts for the conversation.

It’s about the protection of increasingly complex and increasingly important subsea assets.

We’ll let you know how we go. And if you’d like to join the conversation, please email martin.connelly@ultra-map.org anytime.