New cyber security centre opens in Belfast
2009-09-29
The new £25 million Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) has now opened and a number of plans have been announced for the facility. It will bring together expertise in a variety of areas including data security, wireless network-enabled systems and surveillance intelligence systems.
Professor John McCanny, Principal Investigator at CSIT, commented: "Our starting points are mission-driven projects for which we have identified end goals. CSIT also has a strong entrepreneurial ethos.
"We're confident that we'll be able to fast-track the development of marketable applications of our technologies to the benefit of UK industry and the wider economy."
One of the projects at the centre will focus on ultra-powerful processors. CSIT will be developing a new type of content-processor technology that can inspect and analyse internet traffic in real time. This will allow for risky or threatening online behaviour to be indentified and stopped before the damage is done.
Project leader Dr Sakir Sezer noted that conventional processor technology can only cope with data character by character and so it is too slow to analyse online traffic in real time this way. He revealed that the team is working on parallel processors that can be scaled to process up to 32 characters (256-bit) at once. This will make "real-time inspection of huge data volumes possible for the first time ever".
He claimed that network providers will be able to use this technology to provide online users with better protection on top of an advanced user experience and effective management of network resources.
The newly-opened centre will also be carrying out research in how to combat computer viruses. It will be working on a high-speed data processor to provide protection from malware sent out by cybercriminals.
Queen's University Belfast and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council were both partly responsible for funding of the centre. The latter invests over £800 million a year in a wide range of subjects.
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