Karnataka student develops tool to protect small businesses vulnerable to cyber attacks

Bengaluru, Nov 9: A Karnataka student with his team at the Edith Cowan University (ECU), Australia, has developed a sophisticated early warning system to protect small businesses vulnerable to cyber attacks.

Kashyap Vijay, who hails from Karnataka, is part of a five-member team at the Edith Cowan Security Research Institute in Perth that worked on the project to develop the tool, a release here said.

Termed as 'honeypots', the Modern Honey-Pi network is a defensive tool which can be used by cyber security professionals to gather intelligence and monitor attacks aimed at their organisation, it said. They are connected to a company's network looking like a high-value target for cybercriminals but they actually collect data about possible attacks, it said.

The release said they can also be connected to an internal network, for devices which have been compromised. The early warning lets cyber security professionals take action as soon as criminal activity is detected and hopefully put a stop to any attack.

The data collected on potential cyber attacks is also shared with law-enforcement and intelligence services, the release said. "The Honeypot-pi system comes at a fraction of the price of employing a trained cyber security professional," Vijay Kashyap, Research Assistant, ECU Security Research Institute, claimed adding tt costs as much as a coffee machine.

The project was part of a work on integrated learning placement for a group of students studying in ECU's cyber security programme. The group is already in discussions with potential investors about commercialising their project, the release added.

PTI