The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) is opening a cybersecurity lab and funding new research at the University of Waterloo.
With online malicious attacks and botnets becoming increasingly sophisticated and targeted as people share more data, RBC said it will open the lab and invest $1.78m into research at the university to develop advanced cybersecurity and privacy tools.
The lab will be run out of UW’s William G. Davis Computer Research Centre and results will be shared with all interested financial institutions, not just RBC. Its funding will support research in data-driven software defined security this will be led by Raouf Boutaba and will focus on detecting and mitigating security threats using machine learning and AI.
It will also fund the research into privacy enhancing technologies, which targets the safety and security of consumer metadata, and post-quantum cryptography, combining pure mathematics and computer science to produce a data encryption so strong that quantum computers cannot crack it. CryptoWorks21, an enhanced education program focused on post-quantum cryptosystems is also included in the support. RBC will also sponsor the CryptoWorks Industry Day, a graduate student scholarship, a thesis prize, and support for professional teaching.
“Collaborating with the University of Waterloo’s Faculty of Mathematics and their pool of talented researchers will give us more brain power to continually develop Canadian talent to support the demands of the cyber security industry,” said David Fairman, chief information security officer, RBC. “This partnership is important to RBC as we’ll be able to leverage Waterloo’s unique capabilities in mathematical science as it applies to tackling increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks.
Last year, around $2.5bn was invested across the cybersecurity industry according to data by RegTech Analyst. In terms of the amount invested, Q2 2017 saw the most activity, with $1.16bn invested across 36 deals.
Copyright © 2018 RegTech Analyst
Copyright © 2018 RegTech Analyst
