This year Mobile World Congress has moved from Fira Monjuïc to Fira Gran Via. As csitphilip has already pointed out the site is MASSIVE.
As with last year we are exhibiting on the Invest Northern Ireland stand so we have been restricted in terms of stand location. Last year the stand was located in Hall 1. As a result we experienced phenomenal levels of walk up traffic from day one as congress attendees worked their way through the halls sequentially.
This year the traffic flow to the stand has been somewhat different. Located in Hall 7 on the new site we have seen walk up traffic a little slower in the early part of the week and slowly improving as people work through the the 6 halls before us. Notwithstanding, while the footfall past the stand has been somewhat reduced the quality of visitors who have sought us out have been excellent meaning we have had more time to engage with them in a meaningful way.
Marketing activities in the run up to the show have been very targeted towards establishing links with a number of Tier 1 prospects as well as re-enforcing relationships with existing contacts, using MWC as an opportunity for some in-depth discussions around future partnerships and enhanced collaborations over the coming months.
Once again we have taken up the opportunity to speak at the UKTI Cyber Security in the Mobile World session. In his presentation Philip Mills talked about the Cyber Security from a UK perspective highlighting the approaches that the Cabinet Office, GCHQ, Research Councils UK, BIS and the Foreign Office are taking as well as the engagements that CSIT have with those organisations.
He then flagged up our work on machine learning approaches to mobile malware detection, particularly on Android, a particularly insidious problem. Our work on speaker verification was covered as well as how we are working on new mobile speaker verification applications and APIs through our Project Liopa.
Device authentication using Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) developed at CSIT generated a lot of interest. We are involved with LG-CNS and ETRI in the design of the security architecture for an electric vehicle Infrastructure system for identification, authentication, secure access and secure communications for recharging. Our main focus in this phase is on secure authentication schemes used to manage the connection and interaction of devices to prevent unwanted illicit or unintentional activity (i.e., to protect financial transactions, user data queries or updates, price signals, energy distribution signals and other sensitive data flow).
As most recharging and service devices will be in physically exposed locations they need to be hardened against tampering, it is our aim to show that CSIT’s PUF technology integrated with an EV Infrastructure can provide this. We further want to show how PUF can be used to reduce the complexity and cost, whilst improving on existing authentication schemes.
Finally what technology talk would be complete without reference to Big Data! Philip outlined how our researchers on our ARIES Project (ARIES: Accelerated Real-time Information Extraction System) are using hardware acceleration to create intelligence and understanding from massive, complex data sets such as the Twitter fire-hose and our plans to extend this into attached images and video files.
Social and networking events such as the Network Intelligence Alliance party and Belfast Beers on the Northern Ireland stand provided by the excellent Hilden Brewing Company have provided an excellent way for us to chat with potential partner companies in a less formal environment but still tee up a couple of prospective projects with them – hopefully we will be in a position to announce those soon.
As csitphilip mentioned in his earlier post, beware party networking event serving staff bearing gifts of shellfish on silver platters. I’ll be sticking to less risky canapés in future.
