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DIGITALWORLD
companies a strategic advantage inwinning
business.TheUSDe- partment ofHomelandSecurity is a customer ofDaon,whose bio- metric identity assurance systems also process the applications of foreign visitors to Australia and Japan. The same company is also involved in the ambitious national ID project announced for India. Vordel, which has close to a decade’s experience in developing
security for service-oriented architecture, numbers the US De- partment of Justice among its clients, along with other govern- ments and global financial services providers. Acra Controls has also provided its technology to US national security and defence projects.
REGULATORY COMPLIANCE Regulatory compliance is a growing burden for many organisa- tions and several Irish technology companies are meeting this pressing need. These world-class services range from security training on regulations like the Payment Card Industry Data Se- curity Standard (PCI DSS), through to developing software that eases the burden of conforming to European data protection codes. Other companies play in the governance, risk and compli- ance (GRC) category, for exampleproviding audit trails aroundin- formation security.Mindful of the growing area of civil litigation, anumber ofplayers specialise incomputer forensics areas like on- line investigations, which are an increasing challenge for human resources departments in the age of Facebook andTwitter. The solutions being developed by Irish infosecurity companies
meet a growing market demand, according to Jennifer Condon, manager of the software and services division at Enterprise Ire- land. “Inthe financial area andwith the economicdownturn, com- pliance is coming to the forefront. This is a great driver of business,” she says. Ireland’s security companies are also strong in networkmoni-
toring, which meets both cyber defence and regulatory compli- ance requirements. Galway-based NetFort is one of the leading exponents and recently opened aCanada office to serve its grow- ing North America business. Shenick’s technology is frequently used to simulate denial of service attackswhich are becoming an increasing threat to enterprises. PixAlertmonitors networks for inappropriate content – giving it a place in both the monitoring and compliance camps. Much of the latest compliance legislation explicitly mandates
organisations tohave logmanagement, andthere is growing start- up activity in the NovaUCD business incubation campus investi- gating this area. Paul Dwyer, a Dublin-based security consultant and founder of the International Cyber Threat Task Force, be- lieves the opportunity for Ireland in this space is significant: “Everythingwithin governance and risk boils down to being able to detect logs. If you’re going to make a claim that you’ve never been hacked, the logswill tell you,” he says. One of the best indicators of Ireland’s standing internationally is
howit produces attractive acquisition targets in the security sec-
tor.Deals last year included theUKdefence group BAE Systems paying €217mforNorkom,which develops software to help banks combat fraud; US aerospace company Curtiss-Wright’s acquisi- tion ofAcra Controls for an estimated €24m; and the purchase of AEP by the UK defence company Ultra Electronics for €57.5m.
56 INNOVATION IRELAND REVIEW Issue 4 Spring/Summer 2012
AEP’s proprietary technology is accredited by CESG/GCHQ, the UKgovernment’snational technical authority for secure electronic communications.
ACADEMIC RESEARCH Irish colleges and universities undertake awide range of security- related
work.Many of the leading institutions produce a steady stream of computer science graduates skilled in security, digital investigation and computer forensics techniques, in addition to participating in European-level research projects, and increas- ingly, developing intellectual propertywith commercialisation po- tential. From a standing start four years ago, the Irish Security Re-
searchNetwork (Serenity)nownumbers around650participants across industry, academia andState
agencies.This group owes its existence to the decision by theEuropeanCommission to allocate €1.4bn to security research. Europe’s Seventh Framework (FP7) research areas illustrate the diversity of expertisewithin Ireland, asmany of the projects have a broader remit than pure IT secu- rity. They cover civil security issues such as crisis management andhandling radioactive fallout todetecting suspectmoney trans- fer and coastal security initiatives. Many universities are involved in projects investigating a wide
range of security disciplines such as: privacy and trust manage- ment (Telecommunications Software and Systems Group atWa- terfordInstitute ofTechnology); critical infrastructureprotection, cloudforensics andfinancial fraud(UniversityCollegeDublin); the convergence of physical security with information security (Queen’sUniversityBelfast); service innovationingovernance, risk and management (University College Cork); smart power grids and advanced data recovery through virtualisation (Letterkenny Institute of Technology); and encryption and error correcting (NUIGalway). Ireland puncheswell above itsweight in FP7 security research
projects.For four years ina row, Irishorganisationshave increased their share of funding on a cash-per-capita basis. Involvement by Irish SMEs in FP7 projects is one of the highest in the EU per capita – at 53pc compared to the average of 22pc. In 2011 alone, participants fromtheRepublic of Ireland increased their funding by almost 50pc. Groups obtaining FP7 funds illustrate the close collaboration
that Ireland fosters between various stakeholder groups. These teams frequentlymix researchers fromthe academic world with SMEs, or consortia involving some of technology’s household names. IBMis an example of this in action, working variously with a
number of Irish universities to host industry outreach events and guest lectures on security principles. “We alsoworkwith themto help them tailor their courses to make them more relevant to today’s technology challenges. It’s about getting graduates inter- ested in and excited about security,” says IBM’s Crosbie. The company also activelyworks oncollaborative researchproj-
ects across disciplines ranging fromdigital forensics to a project onmanaged securitywith LERO, the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre. “It’s there that we start to put the best minds together frombothsides of the table to comeupwiththebest ideas for security.We’ll be delivering output fromthat that will deliver
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