BAE Systems Applied Intelligence

Contact: contact Owen Coombs (owen.coombs@baesystems.com)

Suggestion ...

No-hassle internet security

Client: James Dickin, BAE Systems Applied Intelligence james.dickin@baesystems.com

How easy do you find it to set up and maintain internet security on your computer? How about your parents? Or your grandparents? For some people setting up and maintaining anti-virus software, differentiating between real and fake pop-up security warnings, recognising the difference between genuine and phishing emails and keeping their computer malware-free is an insurmountable challenge.

ISPs struggle to differentiate themselves solely though pricing and connection speeds so increasingly look for “value add” features that they can offer their customers. An ISP could offer their customers “no-hassle internet security” in the cloud, in the user’s home router or in the form of a “dongle” that sits between the user’s computer and their home router.

Produce a prototype of this security dongle using a standard desktop computer with two Ethernet interfaces – one internet-facing and one user-facing. The dongle should be zero-maintenance and must protect the user from virus, malware and email threats, taking sensible action to protect the user without confusing them.

Feedback:

From this description, I'm not completely certain of the intended scope, and whether it would be feasible for an undergraduate team to achieve anything along these lines within 7 weeks. The functionality described for the "dongle" seems very close to that of a conventional firewall, but with additional intelligent features that would outperform existing spam filtering services. Have I misunderstood?