Innovation Exchange challenge: Assurance of Classified Information Sharing

The UK Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) seek to develop automated information sharing assurance tool(s) for a variety of scenarios.

In order to take advantage of a thriving science and technology ecosystem, and the opportunities this presents for national security, the UK Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MI6, are looking for creative, interesting and novel solutions to some current technology challenges.

This experiment is the first of its kind for SIS, starting with a selection of challenges. It is designed to encourage non-traditional suppliers to work in the national security space – especially start-ups and SMEs.

SIS, is a global organisation that regularly interacts with and shares classified information with partner organisations. They share classified information in a wide variety of formats, including voice, video, text-based messages, text documents and many other formats. Sharing information is part of a collaborative approach, allowing SIS and partner(s) to share and edit documents and classified information between them in real time.

SIS require assurance that the classified information is handled correctly; currently this is often a bespoke solution. SIS are looking to work with industry and academia to develop automated information sharing assurance tools or a tool that can be sued widely in a variety of scenarios.

Considerations include an end-to-end service that tracks and documents where information has been sent, what it’s been used for, notifies them if it has been tampered with outside of agreed terms, has little dedicated infrastructure, and provides a generic service that does not require bespoke reprogramming for different types of information / data file format.

The challenge holder is keen to hear from a range of sole traders, small and medium size businesses (start-ups, SMEs) and academia.