Leonardo youngsters impress with innovative cyber solution

According to government research, almost half of UK businesses were hit with IT breaches in the 12 months leading up to April last year. Nearly seven in ten big firms identified either a breach or an attempted breach, but it is often smaller companies that feel the effects of cyber-attacks the most, often taking a day or more to recover.

The Bristol apprentices were set the challenge of designing, building and testing an affordable system so that it could be used by smaller customers. To give the project an interesting twist, they had to build the system from scratch at zero cost, without drawing on existing technology, using equipment previously scheduled to be retired. The IT package had to be robust enough to cope with a range of challenging scenarios including fire, flood, loss of access to the building and failed computer software.

The young team, made up of Alex Cameron, Jason Cardoz and Nat Clarke, delivered a presentation on their Disaster Recovery Solution to Leonardo’s senior internal design authority. According to Leonardo, the team managed to define a solution which initially wasn’t thought to have been feasible by more seasoned IT engineers.

“I’ve been blown away by their success on this project,” said Tim Ozmen, head of Client Services at Leonardo. “I have a team of highly skilled professionals who have up to 15 years’ experience in this specialised field who would’ve had their work cut out with something like this. But the apprentices dived straight in and created a really innovative solution. It just proves what the next generation of innovators can achieve given the right opportunity.”

Having successfully risen to the cybersecurity challenge, the young trio are now starting the next stages of their apprenticeships at Leonardo. Further information on the company’s cyber apprenticeships can be found here.

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