April 20, 2009
Media contact: Kim Lawrence
Office: 604-864-4611
Cell: 604-302-6257
kim.lawrence@ufv.ca
Chilliwack software company partners with UFV to give computing students real-time industry learning
Most of us lament the number of passwords we have to remember in our busy lives; everything from bank cards to voice mail, email, and even the library requires an access code. The temptation is strong to make them all ‘12345’ or ‘password’, even though we all know better. Even complex passwords are far too easy to share, steal, or guess, if you’re an unsavoury character looking to access someone else’s accounts. Imagine what it’s like if you’re a business owner trying to protect hundreds or thousands of accounts on its corporate network.
Chilliwack’s Scorpion Software helps protect business owners when they need their staff, partners, and clients to remotely access sensitive corporate information from anywhere in the world. The company, led by CEO Dana Epp, provides identity assurance solutions that help assert a level of trust to those who need access, and definitively prove that people asking for access are who they say they are. Their flagship product is called AuthAnvil and it provides ‘two-factor’ authentication for Microsoft Windows log-on, network device log-on, remote access, and web access, in addition to offering custom authentication. In other words, if you’re not who you say you are, it will call your bluff.
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Left to right: Michael Harder (Abbotsford); Cody Marbach (Chilliwack); Helmut Wollenberg
(Chilliwack); Maxwell Mooney (Abbotsford); Jon VanderMey (Langley); Brent Hunter (Chilliwack);
Dana Epp, CEO & Owner, Scorpion Software. |
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Part of UFV’s mandate is to build partnerships between the university and industry, which includes developing programming that gets students out into the field for some practical experience. This past winter, a group of six senior computing students at UFV joined the Scorpion Software team to work on a new project that turns mobile devices - like cell phones, Blackberries, and PDAs - into authentication devices. The students worked in teams developing cutting-edge software while learning the tricks of the trade from the Scorpion team. Last week, they presented the results of their project, which they labelled ‘Ruby Mollis’ (for a rare gem of software, ‘mollis’ is Latin for ‘soft’), to faculty, peers, family, and industry leaders.
“I wanted to share my experience and give back to UFV, but I also wanted to take a closer look at the talent pool available in the computer information systems department at UFV,” says Epp, who also chairs the external advisory committee for computing programs at the university. “I was pleased to see the students embrace my challenge. Through critical reflection on the foundation of learning they already learned at the university, they drove their research past my initial expectations. They embraced my real-world teaching and applied it to their work to really elevate it above their own expectations,” he notes. “The resulting valuable experiences and lessons the students learned impressed even me.” The results of the students’ work will be the basis for a product that Epp plans to further develop and then commercialize.
Paul Kroeker, a faculty member in the computer information systems department at UFV, served as advisor to the students and has done extensive research himself on mobile and embedded devices. “This has been a wonderful opportunity for our students to learn from industry,” he says. “They have had the opportunity to put the theory they have learned in class into practice in the real world. They have also been exposed directly to the best practices for secure software design, development, and deployment currently in use at Scorpion.”
Scorpion Software is also offering summer internships for students interested in entering the information security field. Interested parties can forward a resume to iwannawork@scorpionsoft.com .
For those interested in studying computer information systems at UFV, applications are currently being accepted for this coming September. The university offers one-, two-, and four-year programs of study in computing, including a Bachelor of Computer Information Systems degree. To learn more about these programs, please visit www.ufv.ca/cis .
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