By Simon Quicke
29 August 2008
The wave of high profile data leaks, a fair few of them
involving the Ministry of Defence, have ratcheted up the issue of information
security up the government agenda.
Trustmarque has benefited from those concerns after landing
a two-year £4m contract to provide the MoD with both encrypted and
non-encrypted hardware and software.
Ross Miller, managing director of Trustmarque, said that
information security was an area of concern across the public sector and it was
putting as much emphasis on preventing internal data leaks as protecting the
MoD from external attacks.
“We have been a software supplier for more than 20 years but
information assurance is quite new. There has been a lot of publicity about
losing data and it is not the external attacks but asking how you can pin the
data down internally,” he said.
He added that it had been able to land the contract because
of changes in the Defence
Equipment and Supply (DE&S) framework that opened up the option for more
than one incumbent supplier to pitch for business.
“The MoD
had found it unacceptable that there was just one supplier of information
assurance products and now there are four separate companies that are able to
supply the MoD,” said Robert Cornish, MoD Key Account Manager for Trustmarque.
The former
supplier was Software Box and the other players Trustmarque was up against
included other approved suppliers Centerprise and SCC.
Miller said
that clearly the security issues went beyond just the MoD but getting this deal
would be a reference point the dealer could use with other customers because
security for the defence industry had to be especially tight.
