CISCO awards Singapore Polytechnic students for innovative intruder detection software program

CISCO (The Commercial Industrial Security Corporation), Singapore's leading security service provider, presented awards to three polytechnics, ending a six-month competition in March for the design and development of an intruder detection software program for commercial use.

The competition, launched in conjunction with CISCO's 25th anniversary celebrations last year, awarded a cash grant of $10,000 to Singapore Polytechnic and an additional $2,000 to the team of students who developed the winning software program. The teams from Temasek and Ngee Ann Polytechnic received $1,000 each for their participation. The software was evaluated based on originality, user friendliness, detection mechanism, administrator audit function, notification of intrusion mechanism and cost-effectiveness.

Chan Boon Kiong, CEO of CISCO said: " The Singapore government has identified IT skills development as an important element to maintain Singapore's competitiveness in the global market. As a first step, we hope the competition demonstrates our support in this area. Being in the computer security business, we also find it fitting that we are focusing our community efforts on computer software development in higher learning institutions." When asked if the competition would become a yearly event for CISCO to show their support for IT skills development in educational institutions, Chan was unable to give a definite answer.

According to Lun Kai Shen, general manager, CISCO Computer Security Recovery Services Pte Ltd, the competition rules specified that the teams develop the intruder software for the Windows NT platform. The Singapore Polytechnic team utilised C++ programming language to design their winning entry.

Singapore Polytechnic's entry comprises an additional log-in screen which requires another password, after the standard Win-dows NT log-in screen. An incorrect password which is repeatedly entered would cause the user to be logged-out. The system will then re-boot itself. This serves more as a deterrent to intruders than a fail-safe gateway.

An access-control system within the software allows systems administrators to set different access levels. Another feature to assist the administrator is the EZ-viewer which records and displays the events on the network (such as an unsuccessful log-in attempt) using the NT audit trail.

The program is also capable of encrypting specific files that require additional security. The 'key' to the encryption and decryption is in the form of a floppy disk (which has its own password) that users can then remove and store elsewhere.

Lun stated that the ownership of the program remains with the developers at present. He said that more testing and development of the software program was necessary before it was commercially viable.

CISCO will be conducting the additional testing and enhancements on the NT-based Intruder software program and will be in discussion with Singapore Polytechnic to explore future plans for the software.