Government puts £5m into malware research and national cyber security

The Government has put up £5m to expand the Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) at Queen’s University Belfast.

As well as improving national infrastructure security, the funding will be used to enhance security in virtual environments and connected devices, and tackle emerging malware fraud and personal information theft threats to laptops, smart phones and cloud storage, according to an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) statement – EPSRC shared providing the £5m with Innovate UK (the re-branded Technology Strategy Board).

“The £5m grant, along with £9m core funding from Queen’s, will help the CSIT to continue to grow as a UK innovation and knowledge centre by coupling research with the needs of industry to promote economic development,” said EPSRC.

Commercially, CSIT’s aim is to build on worldwide industry and academic partnerships to increasing its research investment to £38m in the next five years.

Amongst expansion plans is the recruitment of 25 staff across engineering, research and commerce.

Established six years ago, the centre has worked on secure machine to machine authentication, mobile biometric authentication and anomaly detecting algorithms for complex networks.

It has spun out three companies: Titan IC Systems, Sensurity and Activ Wireless, and has commercial engagements firms including IBM, Intel, BAE Systems and Thales.

CSIT is an ‘Innovation and Knowledge Centre’ (IKC), which are part of the UK’s plan to commercialise emerging technologies.

steve bush

from News http://ift.tt/1H5ihmu

via Yuichun