Security by Simplicity (SbS)

Highly committed to continuous innovation and to investing in countries where it is present, Portugal Telecom is positioned as a telecommunications operator engaged with the future. The continuous focus on education, talent, training and a strong human resource policy together with the need to avail itself of the best skills, practices, technologies and knowledge in the domain of cyber-security led PT to associate itself with Carnegie-Mellon Portugal program (http://www.cmuportugal.org/) as main Industry Partner so as to:

• Train and qualify professionals of excellence in the domain of Cyber-security with one of the best universities worldwide;
• Recruit talent specialised in Cyber-security and Information Intelligence;
• Develop and consolidate the association with Carnegie Mellon University (http://www.cmu.edu/) and  with the Portuguese universities with research centres in Cyber-security, aiming to launch research centres that deal with some of the big problems of the real world;
• Promote scientific and technological cooperation with CyLab (http://www.cylab.cmu.edu/) in order to get technology transfer and access to the best practices and trends.

This initiative comprehends a close cooperation between Portuguese universities, eminent Carnegie Mellon University and several Portuguese companies of the Information and Communication Technology industry and aims to kick off several top-level educational and research actions in world terms.

Our collaboration in this ambitious program contributes to consolidating a culture of valuation of innovation and of Research and Development within Portugal Telecom as well as underpinning innovative projects that contribute to strengthening scientific and high-level training capabilities in Portugal. It is worth recollecting that in 2008 PT invested more than 150 million Euro in innovation and Research & Development, which represents more than 2% of revenues.

As to human resources, PT’s involvement in CMU Portugal program comprehends currently 15 Professional Masters and a PhD student in Information Security: a number that will increase over the next few years as a function of the scholarships to be awarded in the future.

In order to optimise this know-how and to gain synergies, PT has decided to organise these resources, talents and skills in a structure with a single and transversal orientation in terms of the different subsidiaries and market segments – PT Security Lab. This concept also aims to support our market offering in terms of Cyber-security products and services, to provide the company with a unique centre of excellence and to lever technical and scientific cooperation with CyLab and therefore positioning Portugal Telecom as a major reference in this area.

The value proposition of the PT Security Lab is based on the conception and design of solutions that simultaneously comply with the highest security demands and neither interfere with or complicate the day-to-day life of organisations or people. Therefore, its motto is: Security by Simplicity (SbS).

The key lines of activity of the PT Security Lab are:

• Secure mobile networks and systems
• Secure computer platforms
• Secure software engineering
• Secure home networks and computing
• Security of cyber-physical systems
• Usability of security and privacy techniques
• Advanced security event monitoring, correlation and viewing systems
• Detection and prevention of internal attacks (fraud and information theft)
• Detection and prevention of external attacks (bot nets, spyware, …)
• Security and risk metrics and models

In the short run, PT Security Lab’s priority will be the kick-off of an innovation agenda to address the challenges of Cyber-security of the main national information infrastructures and critical services. And how? Through the development of the partnership between CyLab – one of the most renowned R&D Labs worldwide in terms of cyber-security – and the main Portuguese research groups in the domain of security of infrastructures and critical systems.

For further information, please send an email to: ptsecuritylab@telecom.pt.

1st Annual Cyber-security Forum (2009)

The first Annual Cyber-security Forum is the first public initiative as the result of the partnership between the PT Security Lab (PT), CyLab (CMU) and Portugal’s major university research centres within the framework of the CMU Portugal Program. It was a meeting whose goal was to gather the major entities and companies responsible for national infra-structures and critical services as well as affiliated research groups, to debate and check the status of National Critical Cyber-security and to share experiences and knowledge at large.

The forum took place on 18 September at Forum Telecom in Lisbon, being the first meeting of an annual update cycle of the innovation agenda under the theme “Challenges of Cyber-security at the end of the decade for infrastructures and critical services”.