TechWatch: Northern Ireland’s Top Cyber Security Startups

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  • With cyber security experts flying to Belfast last week for CSIT’s 5th annual Global Cybersecurity Technology Research Summit, TechWatch asked local academics and entrepreneurs what NI cyber security startups we should be watching over the next year. Below are their top three picks.

    Liopa: Winner of the Software and Digital Media category at NISP’s 25K awards (now the INVENT awards) in 2013, Liopa is a mobile app that records your lip movements (visemes). It can then recognise them, matching them against database records to verify who you are. “Imagine a time before e-banking, you could walk into a bank and, without showing your ID or passbook, the manager knew exactly who you were,” says co-founder David Crozier. “Liopa aims to make user authentication and verification as easy as that again. It’s as simple as taking a selfie.” The technology is being spun out of CSIT as a startup within the next few months, with the company’s first commercial engagement with a customer in April. “ Hard science/deep tech companies aren’t like web apps where you go from concept to beta in 8 weeks; it can take years to develop the technology and get it ready for market.” It looks 2015 is going to be Liopa’s year.

    SaltDNASaltDNA, a Belfast-based company, has a suite of products but it’s most intriguing one is SaltIM, a messaging app which encrypts voice calls and messages and allows users to strike messages from record without a trace. It’s basically a secure communication for users, no matter where they are in the world. It has obvious appeal to industries like the Oil & Gas sector where, the company says, illegal interception of phone calls has become a huge liability for companies. Click to learn more about SaltDNA.

    TitanIC: A company with obvious Belfast roots (it’s in the name), TitanIC describes itself as a “a world leading supplier of hardware engines for content and network processing, for both low cost, low footprint applications, as well as high performance complex regular expression processing.” That may sound horribly complicated but it was enough to impress judges of the Pitch 10 competition, including Martha Lane-Fox. The company was named a finalist and got the opportunity to pitch their wares at No. 10 Downing Street last month. Although he declined to share names due to commercial confidentiality, CTO Sakir Sezer told us their technology is currently being trialled by five of the world’s top six next-gen firewall vendors, all based in Silicon Valley.

    The INVENT Awards 2015 (formerly known as 25K Awards) is now open for applications visit www.invent2015.co or contact Peter Edgar peter.edgar@nispconnect.org.

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