UCC is pioneering the development of a new data security system for the Internet designed specifically to protect information from computer "hackers".

"Basically, the Internet is becoming quite an important commercial tool but it's fairly insecure," says Dr Liam Marnane of UCC's Department of electrical engineering, who is behind the initiative.

Even the simple matter of making a purchase over the Internet leaves one's credit card number open to abuse, and other encryption systems, have proved to be slow to use or, in the case of the 40 bit Data Encrytion Standard, not secure enough.

The UCC designed systems will allow users who regularly transmit sensitive information over the Internet to encode and protect their information from external tampering.

Using technology from the "Xilinx Corporation and funding from Forbairt, Dr Marnane has researched and developed a special card for computers which speeds up the coding process and enables faster transmission of secure information.

Xilinx, a market leader in, the development of field programmable gate arrays highly specialised, programmable semi conductor chips used to process information in electronic systems - have donated £150,000 in digital logic design technologies to the college, placing UCC at the forefront of education in industrial microchip design and development.

The only irony is that, while UCC may be developing the security systems, it is third level college students who are among the most determined of hackers. UCC may, therefore, have a natural testing ground for the new security system . . .