• BT is following through with attempts to take its internal security expertise to external clients and partners.
  • QiO to integrate BT solutions into its own industrial IoT platform services.

BT Security

BT Security

Source: QiO

BT Security trumpeted the acquisition of a new customer for its cybersecurity visual analytics technology Saturn, after signing a licensing deal with analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) software specialist QiO Technologies.

Saturn (derived from “self-organising adaptive technology underlying resilient networks”) appears to be the fruit of a research programme that was led by BT Innovation Labs in collaboration with the UK Technology Strategy Board (TSB) and included partners Imperial College London, Northrop Grumman, and Oxford University. The original aim of the programme, said to have run from 2009 to 2012 and funded to the tune of £3m, was to explore advanced techniques for early detection and visualisation of cyberthreats to the UK’s critical national infrastructure, but its scope was then expanded to further applications. AI-based Saturn is said to have delivered “significant breakthroughs” in the areas of data gathering, integration, data fusion, and visualisation.

BT uses Saturn for the protection of its own systems, and said the technology also forms a key part of the Cyber Security Platform it offers to corporate customers. Indeed, Saturn was recently identified by Ben Azvine, Global Head of Security Research and Innovation at BT, as one of a number of important AI-based systems (Nexus and Tardis were also mentioned) that are said to visually represent data in a way that spotlights irregularities based on what they have learned to recognise as normal behaviour (BTwatch, #300).

QiO plans to combine Saturn with its industrial Internet of Things Foresight Platform to enable industrial customers to analyse real-time data from machinery and sensors, and use the resulting insights to increase the productivity of engineers and data scientists. The BT Assure Analytics service, first launched by BT Global Services in 2012 (BTwatch, #234), is apparently based on Saturn software and forms part of the BT Assure Threat Monitoring service.

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