A scheme to help people with business ideas start up
from home has been piloted in the Luton and Dunstable area, and
this month is entering its £200,000 implementation
phase.
The government-backed project is the brainchild of the Luton
& Dunstable Innovation Centre, a joint initiative between the
University of Luton, Luton Borough Council, Business Link and the
Luton & Dunstable Partnership, which houses around 56 small,
mostly technology-related businesses on four sites close to the
university.
The project is being backed by the DTI Phoenix fund, which aims
to help an increasing number of people who want to be able to
access the Innovation Centre facilities, but who, for various
reasons, need to work from home.
Information security company SafeNet is also playing a key role
in the project to help with access.
“At the outset of this project we quickly realised we were going
to need some means of authenticating the people trying to access
our facilities remotely,” said Mike Anstey, Innovation Centre
manager. “SafeNet’s USB-based iKey security token proved an ideal
solution to the problem.”
The Innovation Centre programmed iKey with their web address and
sent it out to subscribers as part of a start-up pack. When
installed on a member’s computer it will automatically log them
in.
Software residing on the Innovation Centre website interrogates
everyone’s iKey. It extracts their ID information and checks it
against the list of project members.
“IKey also fitted in with our concept of having a virtual
Innovation Centre online, whereby members visiting the site would
see a virtual office building,” added Anstey. “The idea is that
different people have access to different parts of the building and
they use iKey as a way to open doors into the areas they are
authorised to go.
“Eventually we want people to be able to carry out financial
transactions and encrypted communications between businesses. iKey
makes all of this possible.”
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