The screen on your desk is a network boundary. Goldilock’s SilentGlass treats it as one.
In April the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre did something it had never done before: it put its own name on a piece of commercial hardware. SilentGlass is a plug-in device, engineered by NCSC’s own team inside GCHQ, that sits between a computer and its monitor and blocks anything unexpected or malicious travelling over the HDMI or DisplayPort connection, while letting legitimate display data pass. It had already been deployed across UK government estates before the public launch.
The problem it solves is one most organisations have never thought about. Display cables are not one-way. Monitors can receive firmware, and commands can travel back up the cable, which makes the humble screen a possible route into a network, for espionage, disruption or theft. As NCSC’s Chief Technology Officer Ollie Whitehouse put it, “display screens and monitors are everywhere in modern business environments, and the SilentGlass device will help protect previously vulnerable IT infrastructure with unprecedented ease.”
NCSC chose a commercial partner through a competitive process, and awarded the licence to manufacture and sell SilentGlass worldwide to Goldilock Labs, working with Sony UK Technology Centre on production. The device is sold as separate HDMI and DisplayPort units, each protecting a single cable, and is available globally now to government, critical national infrastructure and any business that takes the physical layer seriously.
For Goldilock the licence is a natural extension of what the company already does. Its FireBreak product gives organisations a physical, remotely triggered disconnect for networks and devices: the ability to take an asset off the internet entirely when it does not need to be on it. SilentGlass applies the same philosophy to the display interface. “SilentGlass addresses a gap that has been widely overlooked,” said co-founder Stephen Kines. “The hardware interfaces people rely on every day have rarely been treated as security boundaries, despite being exposed to risk.”
What we find notable is less the device than the endorsement. Government security agencies license technology outward rarely, and when they do the choice of partner is a statement about who they trust to build and support it at scale. That NCSC chose a UK start-up over larger incumbents says something about Goldilock’s engineering and about its focus on hardware-enforced isolation as a discipline rather than a product.
Sources: NCSC announcement, 22 April 2026, https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/news/world-first-ncsc-engineered-device-secures-vulnerable-display-links and The Register, 23 April 2026, https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/23/ncscs_first_foray_into_commercial/
Albion Trinity Capital is an investor in Goldilock. This article is for information only and is not an offer or solicitation of any investment.