Welsh company helps UK police infiltrate the Dark Web

Cardiff based Pervade Software is working with police forces across the UK, applying award winning cyber security products to help them sniff out and deal with threats on the Dark Web.

The Dark Web – websites that exist on an anonymised network beyond the reach of traditional search engines or browsers – has become of increasing concern, enabling the likes of terrorist groups and paedophile rings to perpetrate unlawful activities.

Now using Pervade’s OpIndex platform, UK police forces have a product to rely on for intelligence gathering, delivering insight on more than 25,000 of these websites, more than five times the number originally thought to exist. OpIndex is also a useful tool in the commercial world where businesses seek to discover if their data or IP have been compromised.

Pervade was set up in 2009, and its first product OpView is now deployed in more than 80 countries by clients including BT, Hitachi and JCB, allowing security managers to collect, correlate and report all data types in one system, rather than have to manually cross-reference information from different screens. OpView is used to support law enforcement through another UK Police scheme called Cyber Alarm, a free service offered by police to help protect local businesses, councils and schools, which is being rolled out across Wales before the rest of the UK.

Pervade then went on to develop OpAudit, which is a tracking tool that allows businesses to gather and manage all evidence of compliance in one system and is used to provide the assessment platform behind the very successful national minimum security certification Cyber Essentials.

Pervade Managing Director John Davies, who helped set up and chairs Cyber Wales, the country’s sector cluster, said: “At Pervade, we’ve always applied an innovative approach to the processes of cyber security. It’s an approach that has won us a wide and varied client base, from multinational tech firms to law enforcement agencies, and with OpIndex, we are enabling police forces across the country to access the proliferation of sinister areas of criminal activity.”

Pervade was Runner Up in the 2019 Counter Terror Awards held at the ILEC Conference Centre in London, and was Commended by the panel of expert judges for their contribution to reducing the threat from global terrorism.

Cyber Wales has become a key global hub in the field of cyber security and is a Founding Member of GlobalEPIC – the Global Ecosystem of ecosystems for Partnership and Innovation in Cyber, which includes 27 Cyber Clusters in 18 countries across 6 continents. Aston Martin has located its Global Cyber Security team at Bro Tathan, and the Endeavr Wales funding scheme is driven by Welsh Government and Airbus to help fund the development of early stage research to the point where commercial value can be realised.

Cyber Wales’ ecosystem comprises four core sectors – business, academia, government and cyber defense. Wales leads the way in cyber education with initiatives such as the National Cyber Security Academy at the University of South Wales, the Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Analytics at Cardiff University and the Cyber Threats Intelligence Centre at Swansea University.

Cyber crime is being fought at a national level by the National Cyber Security Centre, on battlefields by the Joint Cyber Command of the Armed Forces, and locally by the Cyber Crime Teams of Regional Organised Crime Units (ROCU) and police forces.

Next year Wales will host CyberUK, the UK Government’s flagship cyber security event, an opportunity for Welsh Government to reinforce the message that Wales is a hub for cyber security in the UK.