NICTA teams with German security company

Stephen Withers
Friday, 03 June 2011 10:31

IT Industry - Strategy

A strategic collaboration between Australian and German companies is aimed at the development of high-security devices for use by defence and government customers.

Australia's NICTA and Germany-based Security Networks (secunet) will collaborate to produce highly secure systems for defence and government users that need to keep different categories of data separate. The conventional approach is to use separate devices and even separate networks for different purposes in order to avoid data reaching less-secure systems.

NICTA has expertise in formal verification and secure microkernel technology, while secunet designs and builds high-security devices.

Kai Martius, Head of secunet's high security business unit said: "secunet has a long track record in high-assurance system design. We recognised NICTA's activities in operating systems (OS) research and formal methods and have been following them with huge interest. We are sure that the next generation of high-assurance systems will rely heavily on separation technologies and the efficient use of formal methods to support evaluation and increase trustworthiness."

Gernot Heiser, leader of NICTA's software systems research group, said "secunet is an established player in the security space, with cutting-edge technology which can benefit from our verification methodology. The partnership will help drive our research and help deploy commercially relevant outcomes in the real world."