Security player Espion awarded €1.3m research funding from EU

11 Dec 2013

Irish IT security player Espion has been awarded R&D contracts worth €1.3m under the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) as part of four large-scale projects.

Espion is one of the largest digital forensics and e-discovery service providers in Europe, with vast experience in dealing with complex digital investigations and e-discovery projects for stakeholders in law firms, corporations, government agencies and law enforcement agencies.

“This funding marks a significant milestone for Espion and endorses our capabilities around contributing to leading-edge R&D,” Espion managing director Colman Morrissey said.

“We look forward to driving innovation in the tools, techniques and insights which are critical to the future of the industry,” Morrissey said.

Espion will be helping to shape the future of ICT security and forensics through developing a technology for sharing and propagating security threat information across national and pan-European key critical infrastructures, providing the EU with a realistic R&D roadmap for the SME sector around cybercrime and cyberterrorism, as well as developing advanced cyberforensics software components that will focus on the convergence of physical and logical security technologies.

“Espion is an excellent example of an Irish SME participating in leading-edge, European R&D security/IT projects and leveraging this activity to develop its business proposition,” Innovation Minister Sean Sherlock said.

“Thanks to companies such as Espion, Ireland won €11m in European Commission security R&D funding in 2013 alone with €6m of that total going to SMEs,” he added.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com