News

evoRISK 2012

Recent events involving both natural disasters and human-made attacks have emphasised the importance of solving challenging problems in risk management, security and defence. Traditional methods have proven insufficient to address these problems and hence Computational Intelligence techniques present themselves as a more appealing alternative.

For these reasons, S2 Grupo's head of R&D, Dr. Anna Esparcia-Alcázar, will be co-chairing evoRISK 2012, the track on Computational Intelligence for Risk Management, Security and Defence Applications, part of the evoApplications conference. evoRISK, which is also co-chaired by Dr. Sara Silva of INESC-ID (Portugal), will be held in Málaga (Spain) from April 11th to the 13th within the evoStar event, www.evostar.org.

evoRISK seeks both theoretical developments and applications of Computational Intelligence to these subjects. All bio-inspired computational paradigms are welcome, mainly Genetic and Evolutionary Computation, but also Fuzzy Logic, Intelligent Agent Systems, Neural Networks, Cellular Automata, Artificial Immune Systems and others, including hybrids.

Topics include but are not limited to:

• Cyber crime: anomaly detection systems, attack prevention and defence, threat forecasting systems, anti spam, antivirus systems, cyber warfare, cyber fraud
• IT Security: Intrusion detection, behaviour monitoring, network traffic analysis ...
• Resilient and self-healing systems
• Risk management: identification, prevention, monitoring and handling of risks, risk impact and probability estimation systems, contingency plans, real time risk management
• Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP)
• Military, counter-terrorism and other defence related aspects
• Disaster relief and humanitarian logistics
• Real-world applications of these subjects

The deadline for submissions is November 30th 2011.

We look forward to your contributions and to seeing you in Málaga!

The Port of Valencia was Europe's first port, to be awarded ISO 28000 certification, with the help of S2 Grupo

AENOR (the Spanish Association for Standardization and Certification) has awarded the certification of safety management systems for supply chain (based on the UNE-ISO 28000) to the Valencia Port Authority the first European operator to obtain certification. Rafael Aznar, Chairman of Port of Valencia was presented the certificate by Roque Giner, AENOR Director in Valencia.

The objective of the UNE-ISO 28000 is to improve the safety of the supply chain by analysing risks and appropriate response plans to reduce dangers for people, facilities and goods.

Organizations are required to assess the security environment in which they operate and determine if appropriate security measures are applied if regulatory requirements are met. In addition, through the ISO 28000 certification the APV is committed to exchanging information with others members of the Port Community.

Attending the certification ceremony were: José Luis Vilar, Head of Global Security, Ramon Gomez-Ferrer, CEO of the Port; José Rosell, director of S2; Federico Torres, deputy director of the Port and General Director of Port Services and Sustainable Development, and Sebastian Naranjo, Head of the Port Operational Safety Division.

FastFix Project celebrates its first year of work

S2 Grupo has organized the fourth session of the FastFix project group - having met the current stage objectives. In the first year, the project team has defined the overall system architecture and the main lines of work for each of the participants in this ambitious R&D European project.

Project members from the following organizations made a three-day visit:: Technischen Universität München (Germany), Lero - Irish Software Engineering Research Center (Ireland), TXT e-Solutions (Italy) INESC-ID - Investigação Desenvolvimento em Lisboa (Portugal) and Prodevelop (Spain).

The FastFix project, coordinated by the S2 Grupo, is aimed at improving the efficiency of software maintenance environments , providing a set of tools for early detection of faults, reproducing of faults, identifying their causes, and even providing tools for the automatic generation of patches.

The President of Valencian Regional Government announces the ProtegITs Project

The President of the Valencian Regional Government has announced, ProtegiTs project, an initiative that began with an S2 Grupo proposal to the Valencian Government. The projects aims is teach children (aged between 9 and 16 years) how to use the Internet safely.

The Regional Government took an early interest and this enabled S2 to greatly expand the scope and momentum of the project and reach the largest possible number of children, ProtegITs has been, providing it with greater means to reach the greatest number of children as possible. ProtegITs has been wholeheartdly supportted by the Bancaja Foundation and Consum Cooperative, as well as other Spanish and multinational companies.

ProtegITs has three basic elements: an informative web page, the juvenile training school for use in schools, and an Internet Protection Kit for children.

In an interactive classroom, children experience in a controlled environment the threats that an 'evil' hacker may pose; learn to take precautions; and study concepts such as information security in an ionteresting way. These courses are also being adapted for secondary schools. In the pilots programs, children learn how to enjoy the educational opportunities of the net while avoiding the risks.

The ProtegITs Kit consists of a browser plugin, and ProtegiTs Application, an application that monitors Internet access and, notifies parents of riks, while offering privacy for the child. The project is designed to encourage communication between children and parents.

As the project develops we are confident that it will help make using the Internet a positive experience for children.

The President of the Regional Valencian Government opens the new premises of S2 Grupo

The President of the Regional Valencian Government (Generalitat Valenciana), Francisco Camps, opens the new facilities of the S2 Grupo. The Regional Government acknowledges the importance of R&D and innovation by small companies as the engine for a more profitable and competitive economy.

Fast Fix project begins

The Fast Fix project kicked off on Thursday 24 June with a workshop in S2 Grupo offices, and a presentation for researchers in Valencia, at he Univardida Politécnica de Valencia science park (25 June).

The program includes the participation of the Technischen Universität München (Germany), Lero (Ireland), the Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores, Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Lisboa (Portugal), TXT e-Solutions (Italy), Prodevelop and S2 Grupo (Spain).

S2 Grupo receives an award from the Telecommunications Night XI for SecurityArtWork blog

This award recognises the quality of the blogs published the S2 Grupo blog SecurityArtWork, and the group's commitment to developing security technology..