Northern Ireland’s cyber and AI sector has received another significant boost with the announcement of £7.5 million in UK Government investment in the Cyber-AI Hub at Queen’s University Belfast’s Centre for Secure Information Technologies.
The funding will support research and development, accelerate innovation in AI-enabled cybersecurity technologies, and strengthen collaboration between industry, academia and government.
It is a positive development for Northern Ireland and further strengthens a cybersecurity ecosystem that already employs more than 2,700 people across 140 companies. The challenge now is translating that investment into practical value for businesses.
Danny McEntee, Managing Director of FutureRange, believes the question for businesses is no longer simply whether to adopt AI, but how to adopt it in a way that delivers real value.
That means starting with the right business use cases and ensuring security, data and governance are considered from the outset.
“Most organisations we speak to are already exploring AI in some form. What they are trying to understand is where it can genuinely improve their business, which tools are right for them, what company data those tools can access, and how they can adopt AI securely and responsibly,” McEntee said.
For SMEs in particular, AI tools are increasingly accessible and, in many cases, already available through the platforms employees use every day. This creates significant opportunities, but organisations need to move beyond experimentation and put more structure around how AI is adopted.
McEntee believes businesses should be able to answer four straightforward questions before deploying AI at scale:
- What business problem are we trying to solve?
- What company or customer data can the technology access?
- What governance and security controls are in place?
- How will we know whether it is delivering value?
He believes this is why cybersecurity, AI and governance should not be treated as separate projects. AI is changing how people interact with company information and expanding the ways in which that information can be accessed, processed and shared.
“The security conversation needs to happen alongside the AI conversation, not after it,” McEntee said.
Since FutureRange acquired Belfast-based EOS Systems in January 2026, the two businesses have been working more closely with organisations across Northern Ireland. McEntee says there is considerable enthusiasm for AI, but also a need for practical guidance on moving from experimentation to secure, governed and commercially useful adoption.
The £7.5 million investment in Belfast’s Cyber-AI capability is an important signal of the direction in which the market is moving. The wider opportunity is to ensure its benefits extend beyond research and technology companies and translate into practical improvements for businesses across Northern Ireland.
For McEntee, the objective is simple: make AI practical, secure and measurable.
These issues will be explored at the FutureRange Secure Intelligence Summit at the Grand Central Hotel in Belfast on 19th November 2026. Speakers from FutureRange, Microsoft and the cybersecurity sector will share practical perspectives on AI adoption, cyber resilience and the priorities organisations should be preparing for in 2027. Attendance is free.
To Register, please click HERE.