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Mindgard, a startup focusing on cyber security for artificial intelligence (AI), has been declared the winner of the UK's Most Innovative Cyber SME 2024 contest at Infosecurity Europe today.
Saima Poorghobad from RX Global presented the accolade to Nipun Gupta, Head of Product, and Stefan Trawicki, Founding Machine Learning Engineer at Mindgard. A panel of cybersecurity experts selected Mindgard from a pool of fourteen finalists.
Founded in 2022 at Lancaster University, Mindgard was recognised for its significant advances in AI security through its flagship product, the Mindgard AI Security Labs. This platform, built upon extensive research and development, offers engineers a free online tool for red-teaming, evaluating the cyber risks to AI systems, including advanced language models such as ChatGPT.
With the rapid uptake of AI by enterprises aiming for a competitive edge, new attack vectors have emerged that traditional security tools are ill-suited to address. Mindgard's AI Security Labs addresses this by exposing potential machine learning (ML) attacks faced by developers and organisations. These threats often go undetected due to their complexity and the scarcity of specialised skills required for detection. Current AI penetration tests can take months of labour by highly skilled and expensive teams, leaving many businesses unaware of the potential disruption impact.
The AI Security Labs automates the threat discovery process, delivering repeatable security testing and robust risk assessments in mere minutes. Engineers can select from a variety of attacks applicable to popular AI models, datasets and frameworks to identify potential vulnerabilities. The resulting insights offer a detailed outlook on AI attack methods and the likely threats of evasion, intellectual property theft, data leakage, and model copying.
Dr Peter Garraghan, CEO of Mindgard and Professor at Lancaster University, expressed his delight at receiving the award. He said, "We are thrilled to have been recognised for this award, and it is a testament to the importance of how AI has been received by the UK market. Cyber security is a critical component for AI adoption. Organisations are either frantically trying to get AI/GenAI out the door without considering security repercussions, or blocking its deployment entirely due to unknown cyber risks, leaving them unable to unlock its commercial value. This is the gap we aim to fill."
He further thanked Infosecurity Europe, noting, "We are grateful to Infosecurity Europe for creating this opportunity to demonstrate our innovation that swiftly identifies and remediates security vulnerabilities within AI."
The prestigious contest, which is open to micro, small and medium cybersecurity businesses registered in the UK, saw fourteen of the UK's most creative and original information security firms competing for the title. The shortlisted finalists included 2T Security, Cyber Mentor Dojo, Cyber Tzar, ECG.ai, ESProfiler, Ethicronics, Gorilla Technology Group, Mindgard, Nova Blue Technologies, Oakdoor Hardware Security Solutions, Overe, Phoenix Security, Quantum Dice and Veracity Trust Network.
Nicole Mills, Exhibition Director at Infosecurity Group, commended Mindgard's innovative prowess. "Mindgard has been chosen for their ability to push the boundaries of cybersecurity and their relentless pursuit of groundbreaking solutions. Their commitment to innovation, whilst up against tough competition, has not only set them apart from their competitors but showcases the pace and change of cybersecurity technologies and the need for continued innovation."
This accolade marks another milestone for Mindgard, joining a distinguished list of past winners that includes ANGOKA, TryHackMe, CAPSLOCK, Hack the Box, KETS Quantum Security, Check Recipient (now trading as Tessian), Device Authority, and Geolang.