NCC Group hires in ex-Motorola team
MANCHESTER-based cyber security firm NCC Group has launched a new hub in Canada to boost its capabilities in mobile, wearable and Internet-of-Things (IoT) security.
The office and hardware security lab in Kitchener, Ontario has six employees who previously worked together at Motorola, with extensive experience in internal mobile and wearable product security research, along with specialist knowledge in hardware security.
Prior to joining Motorola the entire team worked together at BlackBerry Ltd (formerly Research in Motion) for between three and 16 years as part of its Security Research Group.
NCC chief executive Rob Cotton said: “The ability to attract organically such a world class team is testament to NCC Group’s reputation on the world stage.
This new research and delivery capability will further strengthen our already impressive capabilities in mobile, wearable and IoT security.
“We’ve recognised for a long time that modern technical security is a blend of hardware and software. This formidable team will be available immediately for our clients to engage the world over.
“The launch couldn’t have come at a better time as researchers at Gartner predicted that the number of IoT devices that will be connected by 2020 will reach some 26 billion.”
Rob Wood, the newly appointed head of hardware security for NCC Group, said: “As Motorola looked to withdraw from Canada the team looked for a company that would be a natural cultural fit in terms of research and innovation with a strong security focus.
“As a previous customer of NCC Group, my experience of the group’s delivery combined with its reputation and how the recruitment process was handled, is testament to how it’s been able to build and retain such a world class professional services capability. We are all delighted to join the group.”
Michael McCallum, who led the day-to-day operations of BlackBerry’s product security incident response team, is joining the new team alongside Jeremy Boone, whose past experience includes leading Motorola and BlackBerry’s static source analysis and eco-system malicious code detection engineering.
