Targeted at providing 'best of breed' telephony solutions to the growing UK and export markets for secure telephony, both companies will use their sovereign UK High Grade and related Information Assurance capabilities to create a UK-based centre of excellence. Initial offerings will include fixed telephony solutions based on both PSTN and VoIP and interoperable mobile solutions.
SCIP has been selected by the UK Government as its future secure telephony standard and is currently under consideration by at least 29 nations worldwide for defence and public safety environments. The standard is designed for both wide and narrowband voice and data security, providing media independent solutions at a time of rapid change in the telephone communications industry. Key components to the SCIP standard include: key management, voice compression, encryption and a signalling plan.
James Kilazoglou, Managing Director of Thales' e-security activities said: "We are pleased to be undertaking this enterprise at a time when interoperability and communication between states and across civilian and military forces has become essential to the safety of nations. This agreement places the Thales UK / QinetiQ team in a unique position within the UK to exploit this important security technology over the next five years. This builds on Thales' long history of secure communications provision to government and military customers across the world including UK and US markets."
"QinetiQ has a long heritage in developing SCIP and has undertaken significant R&D initiatives into secure, interoperable implementation of the standards," added Andrew Sleigh, MD of QinetiQ's defence business. "This agreement with Thales is an important step towards providing the UK Government with technology that can support communication needs well into the 21st Century."