ANGOKA, a Belfast-based company providing cybersecurity for remote vehicles and aircraft, will develop artificial intelligence (AI) tools to improve its products with researchers from Queen's University Belfast's Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT).
ANGOKA’s collaborative research programme with CSIT will run until March 2026, and the company said its products would be enhanced for use in commercial and public sector arenas as a result.
Robert McCausland, head of ANGOKA’s security products, said: “ANGOKA is delighted to be one of the companies in the Cyber-AI Hub, enabling our designers and engineers to collaborate with CSIT researchers and engineers.
"The hub is funded by the UK Government through the New Deal for Northern Ireland. The funding is delivered on behalf of the Northern Ireland Office and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology by Innovate UK.
“Our products are currently being tested at various sites across the UK including in programmes aimed at introducing large-scale, multimodal transport vehicles and craft. Effectively, our job is to ensure that these systems have trusted and resilient communications that protect them from cyber threats,” he added.
Prof Paul Miller, director of CSIT’s Cyber-AI Hub, said the collaboration signals greater than ever recognition of the levels of expertise in cybersecurity available in Northern Ireland.
“This partnership with CSIT’s Cyber-AI Hub and ANGOKA reflects the strength of cyber innovation emerging from Northern Ireland. By combining our expertise in cyber security, AI and machine learning with ANGOKA’s advanced cyber solutions, we aim to create cutting-edge protections for autonomous and connected systems," said Prof Miller.
"This collaboration will not only strengthen our collective R&D capabilities but also position us at the forefront of cyber resilience for the next generation of transport and communication technologies.”
Prof McCausland added that the collaboration would help ANGOKA to improve "the way we decide on which characteristics of a physical device should contribute to the creation of its DNA, giving us the highest possible level of security for that device."
“The two work streams will see us further develop our DNA generation algorithms, with the CSIT team exploring the AI/ML (machine learning) elements and both teams coming together to build a demonstrator," he continued.
“The demonstrator of the new capability will be incorporated into our core product. The success of that demonstrator will rely on ANGOKA successfully building some enhancements to our current capability, which will then be further improved by the AI/ML capability that CSIT is researching.
“The collaboration with CSIT will help us accelerate towards greater security products which will be essential to next generation transportation within our society in the coming decades."
Photo: (l-r) Prof Paul Miller, director of CSIT’s Cyber AI Hub, and Robert McCausland, security products director at ANGOKA. (Pic: Supplied)
