Secura Group Limited has signed a memorandum of understanding with Republic Polytechnic, the University of Glasgow, and the University of Glasgow Singapore to establish a joint laboratory within RP’s campus for the exploration of training, development activities and research collaboration in the field of cybersecurity.
The collaboration aims to develop Secura’s in-house innovation capabilities in cybersecurity and to create a unique ecosystem of talents, knowledge and resources in which students from RP’s School of Infocomm as well as computing science and engineering students from UGS will work on cybersecurity capstone projects and conduct research which are aligned with Singapore’s Smart Nation objective.
The collaboration will focus on topics such as cybersecurity for Internet-of-Things (“IoT”), data analytics and Industry 4.0, also known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which deals with how manufacturing will be revolutionised by the integration of physical processes, robotics, computing and networking.
The leading technology vendors such as Huawei International, Skybox Security, Rapid7, WatchGuard Technologies Singapore, Netscout Systems and M1 as connectivity partner are supporting sponsor partners of the research and development laboratory. The estimated aggregate investment in the R&D laboratory for the next 3 years is S$10 million.
The Collaboration is headed by a distinguished panel of advisors as follows:
- Professor Christopher Johnson, Head of the School of Computing Science at UofG, currently co-chairman of the scientific advisory board for the €2 billion Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research programme, and an expert in safety and cybersecurity for safety-critical system;
- Dr Keoh Sye-Loong, Assistant Professor at UGS, currently the lead investigator of a research project on cyber security for Smart Grid in Singapore, and an expert in IoT security;
- Boo Chong-Han, Director, School of Infocomm, RP; and
- Paul Lim, Chief Executive Officer of Secura, the only integrated one-stop security solutions provider listed on the SGX.
The MOU signing follows closely on the back of the recent announcement of the new Singapore Cybersecurity Strategy by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the inaugural Singapore International Cyber Week from 10 to 12 October 2016.
Key highlights of the new strategy include the introduction of a new Cybersecurity Act as the first complete form of cybersecurity legislation in Singapore; the increase in cybersecurity spending to 8% of the government’s information and communications technology budget from 5% previously; as well as the development of a cybersecurity ecosystem comprising a skilled workforce, technologically-advanced companies and strong research collaborations.
UofG, which is among the world’s top 100 universities, has a strong research programme with annual research income of more than £181 million, delivering world-class research. In an independent research exercise for the United Kingdom conducted by the Research Excellence Framework3 in 2014, the School of Computing Science was rated top in Scotland for research impact, with 68% of its impact judged as world-leading and 32% judged as excellent at an international level. It is ranked sixth in the UK based on a research intensity-weighted grade point average rank order.