News story

Protecting information from an insider threat

Case study from Cheltenham-based Ripjar who pitched their ideas at the CDE Marketplace on 5 February 2015.

Ripjar logo

Technology company, Ripjar, is looking at new ways to protect an organisation’s data and cyber systems from an insider threat. This threat is the risk posed by someone who legitimately works at an organisation, but who has dishonest intentions - namely to collect sensitive, internal information and to pass it on.

Ripjar at CDE Marketplace

Ripjar, which is based near Cheltenham, has a background in intelligence, and is focussed on getting insights from large-scale data sets. It received funding from the Centre for Defence Enterprise to develop its prototype system to mitigate the insider threat.

Chief Executive Officer Tom Griffin said:

The funding from CDE has allowed us to pursue exciting, high-risk tech innovations that wouldn’t have otherwise been feasible for our small company.

Ripjar monitors the typical web accesses made by employees and looks for staff members who behave in a significantly different way to their peers, or who suddenly change their behaviour. If such an event occurs, an alert is triggered that provides enough details for a security officer to conduct further investigations. This approach considers the rate of web accesses and the content viewed to build up a detailed profile of how individuals within organisations behave. The system learns and adapts to the data presented to it – without making any assumptions.

Centre for Defence Enterprise

Building R103
Fermi Avenue
Harwell Oxford
Oxfordshire
OX11 0QX

Email cde@dstl.gov.uk

Telephone +44 (0)30 67704236

Alternative number +44 (0)30 67704237

Please email for the quickest response.

Updates to this page

Published 5 February 2015
Last updated 25 February 2015 + show all updates
  1. Video added - Ripjar at CDE Marketplace

  2. Pitch presentation slides added.

  3. First published.