Darktrace, the leader in Enterprise Immune System technology, has today announced that it is one of the three finalists for the UK’s top innovation prize, the MacRobert Award, which has a record of spotting the ‘next big thing’ in engineering. The prestigious accolade is presented each year by the Royal Academy of Engineering to the engineers behind the UK’s most exciting and impactful innovations.

First presented in 1969, the MacRobert Award is the UK’s longest running and most prestigious national prize for engineering innovation, with many previous winners now ubiquitous in modern technology, transport and healthcare. The 2017 winner will be chosen by a panel of Fellows of the Academy, using a comprehensive selection process, and will be revealed at the Academy Awards Dinner in London on June 29th, 2017. The other two finalists are Raspberry Pi for its inexpensive credit card-sized microcomputers, and Vision RT for the world’s most accurate real-time 3D body surface imaging system.

MacRobert Award Judge Dr Andrew Herbert OBE FREng said: “Trust in many online systems – systems that run numerous aspects of our daily lives – is at an all-time low, with large-scale hacks reported on a weekly basis. This has moved the issue of cyber security onto the front pages and into the public eye. Darktrace has identified a new form of cyber security that moves the whole industry forwards beyond current perimeter defence models to add an intelligent detect-and-neutralise capability. By applying advanced machine learning methods to a novel software application, it has established a world-beating UK-based company that has no significant competitor.”

Darktrace is a finalist for its disruptive Enterprise Immune System technology, which detects and defends against pernicious cyber-threats in real time. Leveraging advancements in machine learning and probabilistic mathematics from the University of Cambridge, the AI algorithms self-learn the normal ‘pattern of life’ of every user and device within a network, and use that understanding to identify and autonomously respond to emerging cyber-threats, before they escalate into crises.

The nominated team members are: Jack Stockdale, Global Chief Technology Officer; Dave Palmer, Director of Technology; Dr Stephen Casey, Senior Principal Mathematician; Alex Markham, Senior Technical Specialist; Matt Dunn, Vice President of Engineering.

Being a finalist for the Royal Academy of Engineering’s MacRobert Award is a great honour and yet another tribute to the sheer excellence of our engineering team,” said Dave Palmer, Director of Technology, Darktrace. “The nominated team members are vital to the development of Darktrace’s innovative AI technology for cyber defence, which has culminated in the advent of the world’s first self-defending networks that can inoculate themselves against cyber-threats from within.”