Cybersec Innovation Partners (CIP) are a technology company that provides the latest and most complete digital certificate and key discovery and life-cycle management solution - Whitethorn®
No other PKI or cybersecurity management tool can provide Indicators of Compromise at this level of depth. This significantly enhances any organisation’s Security Operations Centre capabilities - complementing whatever cybersecurity tools you already have.
Advanced Digital Certificate Discovery and Management Platform
Whitethorn® is the only software to be able to provide full digital certificate and key discovery, management and automation. No rogue, illegal or expiring certificate can hide and cause damage or havoc now that CIP's Whitethorn® certificate and key discovery and management platform is available.
Only Whitethorn® can find and identify the fake certificates that often hide malware.
You may have an existing PKI management tool, but without adding Whitethorn® you will not be able to identify and therefore manage all of the digital certificates and keys on your system.
Whitethorn®
reduces cyber risk and IT operational risk
Finding the weaknesses that malware and ransomware will use to penetrate your systems
The whole internet depends upon digital trust. Without it the internet as we know it - let alone the Internet of Things - would not work. This depends on digital certification. So hackers and malware use stolen, fake or compromised digital certificates to get access to your systems. Only Whitethorn® can discover all of the certificates and keys on your system, identifying potential weaknesses and exposures.
Avoiding IT service outages that can cost millions and lose the trust of your customers
All internet systems rely on up-to-date digital certificates to keep them safe. But if one or more of your certificates goes out of date without being replaced, then your system has an auto-immune response - causing a service outage like the one at O2. Service outages typically cost large organisations millions in lost revenues and recovery costs. Only Whitethorn® can find all of the certificates that are due to expire.
Whitethorn® support services
CIP also provides a range of services to help you, should you need it, to install and/or manage Whitethorn®.
CIP cybersecurity
eco-system
CIP works with leading parters such as Zsah, who are our distribution partner, and GlobalSign, who are our Certificate Authority partner.
CIP Intelligence
CIP provides market intelligence and briefings on the latest developments in cybersecurity which are followed by thousands of people around the world.
UPDATE - 17 April 2021
Stuxnet and the scary similarity of Sunburst
From Stuxnet to the Office of Personnel Management and then Sunburst, what have we learnt and what is so obvious, no one is looking at what is staring them in the face?
UPDATE - 24 September 2020
Digital Forensics Magazine publishes CIP article on digital certificates
The latest edition of Digital Forensics Magazine features a new article by Andy Jenkinson ‘The History of Cryptography and the Modern Enigma of Digital Certificates’, that asks how many enterprises know where all of their digital certificates are, and how many of those are insecure. One would hope that the answers should be ‘all of them’ and ‘none of them’, but as Andy points out in the article, that is rarely the case.
UPDATE - 16 June 2020
CIP launches Whitethorn® Shield – a unique internet domain, governance and assurance service
Whitethorn® Shield leverages AI driven automated technology to discover, detect, protect, and manage threats to your Internet Domains and Web Sites protecting your Digital footprint against Service outages and Security breaches. Our actionable intelligence better equips your organisation to make proactive, informed Operational Security decisions to proactively manage discovered Threats – before they become major Incidents. Whitethorn Shield® provides daily Domain Governance and Web Site Assurance with actionable intelligence reporting and proactive management of identified Threats.
NEWS UPDATE - 30 May 2020
New Cryptography and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) maturity model
Cybersec Innovation Partners Limited (CIP) have developed a Cryptography and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) maturity model in order to help our clients diagnose the current maturity level of their PKI management, and so develop strategies and plans to improve their PKI and overall cybersecurity posture.
We have more detailed diagnostic descriptions that we use in client situations that we would be very happy to discuss. We have developed a 5 level maturity model - from basic to leader. The level of cyber security risk reduces significantly as the maturity level increases.
Details of the model can be found here
NEWS UPDATE - 16 April 2020
Quantum-safe security partnership
CIP announces partnership with ISARA to offer post-quantum security
Cybersec Innovation Partners Limited (CIP) and ISARA Corporation, the world’s leading provider of crypto-agile and quantum-safe security, today announced their partnership which will allow CIP to offer unique solutions and services to enable a seamless migration of digital trust infrastructures to post-quantum security.
The onset of large-scale quantum computing will challenge the security of current public-key cryptography and create widespread vulnerabilities. The rigidity of today’s infrastructure makes cryptographic migrations complex and costly. Establishing crypto agility in existing systems is the first step towards seamless migrations.
The strategic partnership allows CIP to offer industry leading quantum-safe, crypto agile and hybrid certificate offerings from ISARA. This ground-breaking technology enables systems to be quantum safe without disruption of operations while maintaining the availability and integrity of existing security systems.
NEWS UPDATE - 23 March 2020
HOW CAN WE HELP?
Message from our CEO
In these uncertain times we are witnessing some amazing gestures of compassion, kindness and selfless consideration, I applaud these actions immensely. Free fuel for emergency workers by BP was a fantastic gesture, and so was the leadership shown by Boris Johnson last night. Everyone can do their bit.
At CIP we are busy making the world a much safer place, however, we're never too busy to help others and as we know, cyber criminals have no hesitation to continue their reign of terror and theft during the situation we currently face. If anything they have scaled up and increased their attacks!
If your organisation is overstretched or requires security expertise, advice, assistance or have concerns that need attention but you don't have the skills, contact us. Advice is free, support is free and our in house world leading security experts would be delighted to support you and our community in these times of need. From expiring certs to left open databases, how can we assist you? We are an email or call away:
NEWS UPDATE - 1 January 2020
Test your cybersecurity and support charity
CIP’s 2020 New Year gift.
Throughout January we will provide, free of charge, a Whitethorn PKI scan on two of your devices.
If we do not find any SHA-1 certificates we will donate £10k to a charity of your choice.
If we do find any SHA-1's you will pay a nominal sum to CIP of £1 per certificate and we will donate all of this amount to a charity of our choice.
We all know (hopefully by now) that SHA-1 certificates (deprecated in 2011) within your PKI means you face unnecessary vulnerabilities and risk successful attacks by cyber criminals, potential business disruption, brand reputation and potentially huge fines. Start 2020 off by being secure at foundation level for possibly the first time.
Contact us now to book your Whitethorn scan.
Wishing everyone a successful and safer 2020.
NEWS UPDATE - 17 December 2019
CIP’s latest White Paper, 5G IoT Networks – heightened need for digital security and strong, effective PKI has just been published, and is available from the Whitethorn® page of our website.
NEWS UPDATE - 4 October 2019
CIP are holding a webinar for distribution partners on the 14th October at 09:00. This will include a demonstration of Whitethorn® as well as specific use cases, including the discovery and migration of SHA1 certificates.
Follow this link to register - https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5791075368660642827
NEWS UPDATE - 23 September 2019
CIP’s latest White Paper, Why compromised digital certificates are a danger and how the risk can be minimised has just been published, and is available from the Whitethorn® page of our website.
NEWS UPDATE - 16 September 2019
CIP sponsored the IDC Conference on Identity & Privacy “The Keys to Digital Trust” in London, 19th September, 2019
NEWS UPDATE - 21st August 2019
New series of white papers on cybersecurity
Cybersec Innovation Partners are at the forefront of promoting best practice in cyber-security. To this end CIP are preparing a series of white papers on important issues, including the operational risks and how to identify and manage rogue certificates that could compromise any organisation’s IT security.
See our White Papers at the bottom of our Whitethorn® page.
NEWS UPDATE - 5th August 2019
Two luminaries of the UK cybersecurity industry have agreed to join the CIP Advisory Board.
Don Randall and Andy Watkin-Child have joined Cybersec Innovation Partners Advisory Board with immediate effect, bringing additional experience of senior-level cyber risk managment, Don from the Bank of England, and Andy from Santander.
Download Press Release for more details.
NEWS UPDATE - 14th July 2019
England have won the cricket World Cup - and CIP have launched the Whitethorn® Challenge.
Click here to read more about the Whitethorn® Challenge
NEWS UPDATE - 20 June 2019
CIP reveal another serious software flaw as Google Chrome leaves billions at potential risk of fraud, identity theft, malicious surveillance and remote access.
More than one billion Google Chrome users worldwide could be at risk of fraud, identity theft, malicious surveillance and remote access as a result of a major flaw embedded in the browser’s software.
Paul Foster, Group Chief Information Officer at Cybersec Innovation Partners (CIP), discovered a revoked certificate while conducting an exercise utilising his company’s certificate management tool Whitethorn®. Foster alerted Google Chrome developers on May 16 that a root certificate had been revoked on January 20 2018 and asked them to take immediate action.
NEWS UPDATE - 31 May 2019
Whitethorn® has just found a significant security flaw in Microsoft’s software on a new Microsoft Surface Pro.
Paul Foster, Group Chief Information Officer at Cybersec Innovation Partners (CIP), discovered a revoked certificate of Taiwanese origin while conducting an exercise utilising his company’s certificate management tool Whitethorn®. Foster alerted Microsoft that the certificate from Chunghwa Telecom had expired and asked them to take immediate action.
Foster, former global head of cyber security at HSBC, said: “I was astonished at what we found when we scanned a new Microsoft Surface Pro. This has been a real eye-opener into flaws in certificate management at trusted vendors. You can’t blame Microsoft because before Whitethorn® there was no mechanism for finding these revoked certificates."
