Nexor Limited is a privately held company based in
Nottingham
Nottingham ( , locally ) is a city and unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, England. It is located north-west of London, south-east of Sheffield and north-east of Birmingham. Nottingham has links to the legend of Robi ...
, providing product and services to safeguard government, defence and
critical national infrastructure computer systems. It was originally known as X-Tel Services Limited.
History
Nexor Limited was founded in 1989 as X-Tel Services Limited out of the
University of Nottingham
, mottoeng = A city is built on wisdom
, established = 1798 – teacher training college1881 – University College Nottingham1948 – university status
, type = Public
, chancellor ...
and
UCL, following research into
X.400 and
X.500 systems for the
ISODE project.
In 1992 Stephen Kingan joined the business as
CEO.
In 1993 X-Tel Services Limited was renamed Nexor Limited.
In 1996
3i invested in the business to launch Nexor Inc.
In 2004 Kingan and Nigel Fasey acquired the business.
In 2008
Colin Robbins was appointed to the board as
CTO.
In 2012 Kingan acquired 100% ownership of Nexor.
October 2013, the company moved headquarters from Nottingham Science Park to the NG2 Business Park.
Nexor customers include
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...
,
European Defence Agency
The European Defence Agency (EDA) is an agency of the European Union (EU) that promotes and facilitates integration between member states within the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). The EDA is headed by the High Representative ...
,
UK MoD,
US DOD
The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national secur ...
,
Canadian DND,
Foreign and Commonwealth Office and
Met Office.
Nexor designed and deployed the first public
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
search engine
ALIWEB and the associated
robots exclusion standard
The robots exclusion standard, also known as the robots exclusion protocol or simply robots.txt, is a standard used by websites to indicate to visiting web crawlers and other web robots which portions of the site they are allowed to visit.
Th ...
.
Nexor is a contributor to the
Internet Engineering Task Force
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and a ...
, having worked on Internet
RFCs 1086,
1165,
1488,
1606
and 1778.
Nexor developed a
Microsoft Exchange Client
Microsoft Exchange Server is a mail server and calendaring server developed by Microsoft. It runs exclusively on Windows Server operating systems.
The first version was called Exchange Server 4.0, to position it as the successor to the related ...
for Unix.
Nexor was the first organisation to be awarded the
Intellect Best Practice Certificate.
Nexor has run regular demonstrations at the Coalition Warrior Interoperability Demonstration.
Nexor the first organisation to achieve
TickItPlus a quality-management certification program for
software development.
Nexor have strategic partnerships with
Boldon James and
QinetiQ.
Nexor's Data Diode product is supplied via an
OEM
An original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is generally perceived as a company that produces non-aftermarket parts and equipment that may be marketed by another manufacturer. It is a common industry term recognized and used by many professional or ...
relationship with Fox-IT.
Nexor is a supplier on the
UK Government
ga, Rialtas a Shoilse gd, Riaghaltas a Mhòrachd
, image = HM Government logo.svg
, image_size = 220px
, image2 = Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom (HM Government).svg
, image_size2 = 180px
, caption = Royal Arms
, date_est ...
G-Cloud
The G-Cloud (or G-Cloud complex) is an interstellar cloud located next to the Local Interstellar Cloud, within the Local Bubble. It is unknown whether the Solar System is embedded in the Local Interstellar Cloud or in the region where the two c ...
Cloudstore, and an Official cyber security supplier to the UK Government.
Nexor won 2013
DSEi innovation challenge.
Nexor is a contributor to Cyber Champions a community initiative to promote best practices in digital literacy and online safety awareness to schools, youth organisations and interest groups across the UK.
Nexor sponsor the Cyber Security Challenge designed to promote careers in cyber security. Nexor was in the first batch of companies to achieve the UK’s Cyber Essential standard and a contributor and industry launch partner to the
PAS754 software development standard led by the
Trustworthy Software Initiative. In 2015 Nexor launched a consulting arm - Qonex
Products and services
Nexor is primarily focused on Secure Information Exchange for
defence
Defense or defence may refer to:
Tactical, martial, and political acts or groups
* Defense (military), forces primarily intended for warfare
* Civil defense, the organizing of civilians to deal with emergencies or enemy attacks
* Defense indus ...
,
governments and
critical infrastructure
Critical infrastructure (or critical national infrastructure (CNI) in the UK) is a term used by governments to describe assets that are essential for the functioning of a society and economy – the infrastructure. Most commonly associated wi ...
.
Products and services include:
*
Data Diodes to enforce one way data flows
*
Data Guards and
High Assurance Guard
{{Unreferenced stub, auto=yes, date=December 2009
A High Assurance Guard (HAG) is a Multilevel security computer device which is used to communicate between different Security Domains, such as NIPRNet to SIPRNet. A HAG is one example of a Contr ...
s to authorise and filter email and data communications
*
Cross Domain Solutions and
Information Exchange Gateways to enable secure information exchange between secure networks
* CyberShield Secure to ensure secure development and deployment of Nexor's technology
*
Military Message Handling System
Assurance
Several Nexor products have been evaluated under the
Common Criteria scheme to obtain independent verification of their claimed functionality, including:
* Nexor Sentinel, EAL4+ (Jan 2013)
* Nexor Data Diode, EAL7+ (June 2010)
* Nexor MMHS, EAL2 (March 2005)
Collaborative research and development
Nexor has been a contributor on the following collaborative
research and development projects:
Paradise
Paradise (1989-2002) (Piloting a Research Directory in an OSI Environment) was part of the
ESPRIT COSINE project to establish a pan-European computer-based network infrastructure that enabled research workers to communicate with each other using
OSI. It was later prefixed NameFlow-Paradise. Paradise implemented a distributed
X.500 systems, across over 700
DSAs in over 30 countries. The project is documented in the NameFLOW archive
Quipu
''Quipu'' (also spelled ''khipu'') are recording devices fashioned from strings historically used by a number of cultures in the region of Andean South America.
A ''quipu'' usually consisted of cotton or camelid fiber strings. The Inca people ...
was the major X.500 implementation used in Paradise. Implementations also came from
Inria
The National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria) () is a French national research institution focusing on computer science and applied mathematics.
It was created under the name ''Institut de recherche en informatiq ...
led by
Christian Huitema
Christian Huitema (born 1953 in Nantes, France) was the first non-American chair of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), serving from April 1993 to July 1995. He currently is a consultant focused on privacy on the Internet.
Biography
After grad ...
and
Siemens DirX, originating from the Thorn project, implementing the
ECMA TR32 standard. David Goodman was the project manager.
MAITS (Multilingual Application Interface for Telematic Services) developed multilingual interfaces for X.400 and X.500 on top of Paradise.
Password
Password (1993-1995) (Piloting a Secure Service Within OSI R&D) was a European Community-sponsored VALUE program, comprising consortia from France (
Inria
The National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria) () is a French national research institution focusing on computer science and applied mathematics.
It was created under the name ''Institut de recherche en informatiq ...
), Germany (
GMD Darmstadt) and the UK (
UCL and Nexor), to establish a pilot security infrastructure
for network applications for the European research community. The
consortium developed secured applications based on
X.509
In cryptography, X.509 is an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) standard defining the format of public key certificates. X.509 certificates are used in many Internet protocols, including TLS/SSL, which is the basis for HTTPS, the secu ...
, including the
OSISEC PKI. The primary application was
PEM, a forerunner of
S/MIME S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) is a standard for public key encryption and signing of MIME data. S/MIME is on an IETF standards track and defined in a number of documents, most importantly . It was originally developed by R ...
and
SEEOTI. Goodman of
UCL was the project manager, and Joerg Reichelt was the Nexor lead engineer.
Eurocoop and Eurocode
Eurocoop (1991-1992) (
Esprit III Project 5303)
and the follow on project
Eurocode (1992-1995) (Esprit III Project 6155)
aimed to develop powerful and effective systems for supporting distributed collaborative work. Partners included
Aarhus University,
GMD Darmstadt,
Rank Xerox
Rank is the relative position, value, worth, complexity, power, importance, authority, level, etc. of a person or object within a ranking, such as:
Level or position in a hierarchical organization
* Academic rank
* Diplomatic rank
* Hierarchy
* ...
and
ICL.
The approach adopted was to integrate components from a number of existing systems and to develop new collaborative tools based on the study of a large-scale technical application that encompasses many collaboration problems. Single components tools were developed that can be integrated with existing tools and that are able to interoperate with each other. ICW was a closely related
DTI funded project.
Pippa Hennessy was the Nexor project manager.
Regis and Renaissance
Regis
(1995–1998) was a collaborative project with Diamond Cable Communications and
University of Sheffield
, mottoeng = To discover the causes of things
, established = – University of SheffieldPredecessor institutions:
– Sheffield Medical School – Firth College – Sheffield Technical School – University College of Sheffield
, type = Pu ...
to investigate problems inherent in providing regional business communities with low-cost, high-speed access to local information services. Robbins was the Nexor project manager.
The EU ACTS Project Renaissance
(1995–97) was led by Fretwell Downing to develop a
virtual vocational training environment, with the
University of Sheffield
, mottoeng = To discover the causes of things
, established = – University of SheffieldPredecessor institutions:
– Sheffield Medical School – Firth College – Sheffield Technical School – University College of Sheffield
, type = Pu ...
, Diamond Cable Communications and Yorkshire Cable and delivered to the
UK National Centre for Popular Music
The National Centre for Popular Music was a museum in Sheffield, England, for pop and rock music and contemporary culture generally, a £15 million project largely funded with contributions from the National Lottery, which opened on 1 Mar ...
. Harold Combs was the Nexor project manager.
iGRC
The iGRC project (2010-2012), was a collaborative project with
HP, Assuria, Infogov,
Cranfield University,
Loughborough University and
Birkbeck, University of London to automate threat level and control status changes for real-time management of the complexity, risk and resilience of secure information infrastructure.
CloudFilter
CloudFilter (2012–13) was an
EPSRC
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is a British Research Council that provides government funding for grants to undertake research and postgraduate degrees in engineering and the physical sciences, mainly to univers ...
collaborative project with
Imperial College to explore novel methods for exercising control over sensitive data propagation across multiple cloud providers.
Cross Domain Tactical Service Bus
A project led by 2iC to deliver a proof-of-concept demonstration for a Cross Domain Tactical Service Bus, winning the DSEI Innovation Award 2013.
KTP
Project with
De Montfort University
De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) is a public university in the city of Leicester, England. It was established in accordance with the Further and Higher Education Act in 1992 as a degree awarding body. The name De Montfort University was tak ...
to research, develop and implement the use of hardware, as a robust alternative to software in high assurance network security devices.
CSIIS
The
Defence Science and Technology Laboratory
The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) is an executive agency of the Ministry of Defence of the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is "to maximise the impact of science and technology for the defence and security of the UK". The a ...
(Dstl) on behalf of the UK Ministry of Defence established a programme to realise the potential benefits from novel technology to front line forces. A consortium, led by
QinetiQ (called Sirius, comprising over 40 organisations) provides the experience and research capability for CSIIS. In September 2014, Nexor won the best research poster at the Annual Symposium of the UK Information Assurance Advisory Council (IAAC) based on CSIIS work.
CAPRI
An
innovate UK
Innovate UK is the United Kingdom's innovation agency, which provides money and support to organisations to make new products and services. It is a non-departmental public body operating at arm's length from the Government as part of the United ...
funded consortium to lead R&D in connected and autonomous
CAVs on-road implementation, in which Nexor provided cyber security services.
Personnel and alumni
Many Nexor employees (current and former) have made
notable
Notability is the property
of being worthy of notice, having fame, or being considered to be of a high degree of interest, significance, or distinction. It also refers to the capacity to be such. Persons who are notable due to public responsibi ...
contributions to the Internet or business community, including:
* Stephen Kingan (1992–present) – Chairman and CEO. Kingan was also a non-executive director of
Investors in People (2005-2011) and is a founding member of the Security and Resilience Industry Council (RISC).
*
Martijn Koster
Martijn Koster (born ca 1970) is a Dutch software engineer noted for his pioneering work on Internet searching.
Koster created ALIWEB, the Internet's first search engine, which was announced in November 1993 while working at Nexor and presente ...
(1992–1995) – Creator of
ALIWEB, the first Internet search engine.
* Dr Graeme Lunt (1990–2004) — Co-founder of Nexor and creator of the first UNIX X.400 User Agent for Microsoft Exchange.
*
Mark Harman (2012–present) – Non-executive Director
* Julian Onions (1990–2013) – Co-founder of Nexor and messaging expert behind
PP, author of RFCs 1086,
1165
and 1606.
*
Colin Robbins (1990–present) – Technical Director and co-author of LDAP.
* Dr Hugh Smith (1990–2000) – Co-founder of Nexor, while a Reader in Computer Science at the University of Nottingham. Smith became an owner of EIBS, an evolution of the
Regis
Regis or Régis may refer to:
People
* Regis (given name), a given name (including a list of people with the name)
* Regis (surname), a surname (including a list of people with the name)
* Regis (musician), full name Karl O'Connor, an Englis ...
project. Smith died in 2020.
References
External links
Nexor Corporate Web SiteQonex - Nexor's consulting division
{{coord missing, Nottinghamshire
Companies based in Nottingham
Computer security companies
Privately held companies of the United Kingdom
Science and technology in Nottinghamshire
Software companies of the United Kingdom