BMT secures cyber-defence funding
CDE encouraged companies, both big and small, as well as academia, to put forward innovative proof-of-concept research proposals, based on approaches to human interaction with data, to increase understanding in cyberspace. BMT put forward its proposal demonstrating solutions and methods that have the potential to improve on current techniques and tackle the scale and breadth of the problem.
Simon Luck, Head of Information Services and Information Assurance at BMT Defence Services explains: “This funding aligns with the recent announcement from George Osborne that cyber security spending would increase to £1.9 billion by 2020. Defending our critical national infrastructure is of paramount importance and key to this is having a deep understanding of the cyber elements to help enhance our skills and improve education amongst organisations so that they are fully aware of the potential vulnerabilities.”
As part of this study, BMT will look to revolutionise the command and control of cyber warfare by developing and evaluating a tool that helps to increase situational awareness of the cyber battlespace for commanders, allowing for quicker and better decision making. Alex Barnett, the technical lead at Dstl for this competition, comments: “Understanding cyberspace is a human intensive process requiring commanders to assimilate, interpret and make sense of complex data. To avoid overloading military commanders with data and information, which can reduce their decision making effectiveness rather than strengthen it, we need to identify revolutionary approaches.”
BMT will work closely with advanced technology companies including innovative start-up company MASSLESS VR who have produced a high-precision pen that works in BMT’s immersive command and control environment. The partnership between BMT and MASSLESS VR provides Dstl with access to comprehensive software development and defence experience coupled with the latest in technical developments of human computer interaction hardware.