Challenge

To test a cybersecurity company’s authentication capability, which offers a new way for machines to communicate with each other securely.

Background

On October 20, 2025, an Amazon Web Services outage temporarily shut down large swathes of the internet, from social media platforms Snapchat and Reddit to banks like Lloyds and Halifax and games like Roblox and Fortnite. A month later, a Cloudflare outage left millions of internet users unable to access Chat GPT and the social network X.

These were just the latest examples of how a simple authentication failure can bring down a whole system. This is the key problem being looked at by Iothic, a company that sprang from the University of Oxford’s mathematics department to develop cybersecurity solutions that meet the ever-changing digital landscape. 

The company has developed a new way of authenticating computer networks by allowing devices to speak to each other and build trust between themselves. Instead of having an authentication server which acts as a single point of truth — and potentially a single point of failure — Iothic’s product allows the machines themselves to become the source of trust, so if the server is attacked, the devices can authenticate each other instead.

Iothic needed to test its product, and a National Cyber Security Centre for Startups programme introduced it to the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC). With its trained IT professionals and unique test environment, the AMRC was the perfect place to turn to.

Innovation

The AMRC’s engineers ran a series of tests on latency, data integrity, and network speeds. They conducted considerable beta testing to help make a better product which is easier to install. 

As it's a very new product, having the benefit of fresh expert eyes on it was crucial. As part of the project, the engineers debugged the user guide and updated the terminology of the manual to make it more accessible. 

Result

As a result of the AMRC’s unbiased technical assessment, Iothic made significant improvements to the product’s installation and maintenance process, and to the related documentation.

The project also came with commercial benefits. The AMRC was able to showcase Iothic’s technology to the many major companies it works with — and provide valuable links and contacts to the startup.

Impact

The AMRC’s work led to a much improved product for Iothic, with better usability for their many clients in over six countries. The company is now seeking secure funding for further work at the AMRC, building a larger working demonstration that they can use to showcase their capabilities to large organisations with critical information to protect.

It is part of a wider piece of work within the AMRC to help connect systems in a safe and sustainable way. By storing data from every device in a network, it is possible to look at organisation-wide data to see where things go wrong, helping to fix problems quicker and more safely. 

The project with Iothic was another step towards improved global cybersecurity standards, safeguarding businesses and keeping us all connected into the future.