July 2011

Nexor is helping one of our Far East government customers to improve their network security. We are creating connections between their separate networks running at different classification levels to enable secure transfer of network event data to a central location. The system is being built in high availability mode to ensure constant real-time event collection so that nothing is missed in the audit log.

We have recently helped two of our public sector customers create a secure mechanism for transferring Windows and anti-virus updates to their high-domain networks. Maintaining currency of software is essential to any organisation that wishes to protect Intellectual Property from theft, prevent data leakage, defend against Denial of Service attacks and maintain high availability of business critical networks. There is an added benefit of reducing cost through automated rather than manual transfer.

The Nexor solution provides a secure one-way transfer that ensures sensitive information cannot leak out and that the software updates are not infected prior to transfer.

The Bulgarian MOD has accepted its first implementation of a Nexor-based Military Message Handling System (MMHS) in association with Bulgarian System Integrator, ELTA R.

Cyber Champions is a YPNGlobal initiative designed to teach school children how to be safe on-line. Nexor got involved right at the start with Colin Powers and Alex Green, two of our young graduate software engineers, enthusiastically volunteering to participate. They were delighted to attend the scheme’s official launch at the House of Commons on 16 June, with the Rt Hon Alun Michael MP, and provide a short testimonial speech. Anu Khurmi of IBM, sponsor and mentor for IYPN, thanked them for their “fantastic support for the event” and commented that they had been “outstanding young professionals”.

Although cloud computing offers organisations the opportunity to lower the cost of providing IT, concerns about the security risks of moving your systems in the hands of an external third party can off-putting. One of the key worries that we have found is the fear that sensitive data will accidentally or maliciously be leaked. The cloud providers will also be concerned about their liabilities of inadvertently accepting and holding classified data in contravention to their Service Level Agreements. At Nexor, we are researching new guard technology designed to help both cloud adopters and providers manage their risks. We are also looking for partners to join us in the FP7 Security Call for high assurance cloud protection.

Nexor and Boldon James are joining forces in a strategic partnership that will result in a set of proven pre-integrated solutions designed to be easier and quicker to deploy, thereby reducing risk and implementation costs.

We are working on a combined Military Messaging Handling System (MMHS) offering with Boldon James’ SAFEmail™ client and Nexor’s Vanguard, our tactical gateway for STANAG 4406 Annex E low bandwidth data handling.

We are adopting Boldon James’ Classifier products to protectively mark our internal information and we will be marketing Classifier in conjunction with our Watchman for UAG medium assurance guard that plugs into Microsoft Forefront’s Unified Access Gateway. We are also fully supportive of Boldon James’ new FreeMark and applaud their move to encourage better information handling through labelling.

Security labels are a popular method of improving information management to reduce the risk of data mishandling, but organisational policies often stop short of defining how to implement labels consistently in electronic format. Our new Labelling Policy Definition Service will help you to create labelling policies to support the implementation of data handling initiatives on your IT systems.

Steve Kingan, our CEO, has joined a select group of SME leaders on the Cabinet Office SME Panel. This group will work with the government to break down the barriers that prevent SMEs doing business with the public sector. The target of achieving 25% of new contract awards for SMEs currently includes business won through the supply chain, but the group will look into ways of encouraging direct contracting and new models for collaboration between SMEs.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills invited Nexor and other SMEs to a breakfast meeting with CESG. The discussion topic was how government and industry can work together to ensure the UK has a strong and sustainable cyber security industry in order to make the UK a safe place to do business and to foster the exportability of UK cyber capability.

We are delighted with our new outsourced Business On-line Productivity Suite (BPOS) service from Microsoft. Our email service and Sharepoint are now sitting in the cloud and we are reaping the benefits of lower cost, improved remote access and increased security.