Syphan Technologies supports Bradford University research into techniques to detect the latest multi-staged stealth attacks

(25/03/2009)

Syphan Technologies, which has developed high-speed threat protection technology, has agreed to provide financial and technical support for a new research project based at Bradford University’s School of Informatics.

The project, code named SINBIN, is focussed on developing new inspection techniques that are capable of detecting the latest multi-staged stealth attacks. These are increasingly being used to get round widely used point-security methods and gain access to sensitive data and applications used by major organisations for their day-to-day operations. The results of the work will be of global significance in the fight against cyber-crime.

The research project, at the University’s campus based in West Yorkshire, is headed by Dr. Irfan Awan and a team of post-graduate students who, with help from Syphan have created a purpose-designed test lab capable of simulating the full range of threats found in the real-world, enabling them to test their threat protection technology under the most extreme conditions.

“In recent years both network technology and security threats have become more sophisticated particularly as more organisations move to take advantage of the very high speed broadband connections that are now widely available,” explains Dr. Awan. “This means that current security systems can no longer be relied on to provide the level of protection needed to ensure that networks cannot be compromised; our research is focussed on developing new ways of dealing with these threats and preventing the sort incidents of data leakage that are now seemingly everyday stories in the news. Without the help of businesses like Syphan we would not be able to carry out this critically important work.”

Syphan’s own research and development team has recently completed work on the company’s integrated threat control appliance, the ITC220, which is capable of operating in the 10 Gigabyte broadband environment, much faster than the speed at which most enterprise networks have typically operated.

“Up until now network managers have had to balance their security needs with the usability of the system. With many new applications such as Internet telephony and video streaming needing very high speed connections to function effectively this has often meant that security has had to be a secondary consideration. The ITC220 is designed to deliver the highest levels of security without compromising the performance of the network” commented Syphan CEO, Pravin Mirchandani. “The objectives of the SINBIN project are perfectly aligned with our own technology roadmap and we can only see mutual benefit arising from this tie up with Dr. Awan’s team”

The support agreement between Syphan and the University includes the loan of over £140,000 worth of prototype hardware that will give the research team access to Syphan’s patented, multi-dimensional parallel processing technology to test their software at aggregated speeds of up to 40 Gigabytes per second, the level at which the world’s major service providers and telcos already operate. “In the future, we see security as something provided by ISPs as part of a package of services for Internet users. Our technology makes this a real short-term possibility and opens up new revenue opportunities for the leading companies in this sector,” commented Mirchandani.

Related topics:  Hacking and intrusion prevention   Internet and Web security   Network Security   Security threats and vulnerabilities   Virus, Worm, Email security, spyware and malware 

Print version | Email to a friend | Related articles

Data breaches: Trends, costs and best practices gives you all the latest information on securing personal and corporate data, key recommendations for immediate action to improve data security, and how to respond to data breaches.

Other Security news and resources