Two Birmingham City University students have set up their own
data recovery business.
Dominic Nielen-Groen and Chris Elmore Dominic, who are both in
the final year of BSc (Hons) Forensic Computing at the University's
Faculty of Technology, Engineering and the Environment started
Zibit Datalab in February 2011. Based at Fort Dunlop in Birmingham,
Zibit Datalab specialises in data recovery from a wide variety of
storage devices.
The pair who felt they had what it takes to 'go it alone' and
wanted to utilise their enthusiasm and the skills they have gained
during their time at university to be a success. They realised
there were deficiencies and gaps in the data recovery market and
found a significant number of companies both locally and nationally
had an unclear pricing policy, often starting very low, then adding
additionally costs or starting with a very high price and still
adding extra costs on. This gave them the idea of setting up a
company which offers a fixed price service.
Even with the current economic climate and their university
workload Dominic and Chris have grown their client base and have
built up contacts within the industry. Upon graduation the pair
plan to move into the area of digital forensics.
Chris said: "During the planning process, certain members of the
faculty were very helpful and provided a lot of support that both
Dominic and I found invaluable. Shahid Shabbir course director for
BSc (Hons) Forensic Computing has acted as a kind of mentor to us,
giving us advice on techniques, and tools that would be affordable
to our company."
Associate Dean of the Faculty of Technology, Engineering and the
Environment, Dr. Peter Rayson, said: "We are very proud of our
students; they take full advantage of their learning opportunities
with us on their programmes of study.
Equally we are also proud of our staff who always go the extra
mile to help students. In this case it is a testimony to the level
of confidence our students now have in their skills and the
entrepreneurship to spot a rising market in Cybersecurity of which
our School of Computing, Telecommunications and Networks has a deep
technical insight."
The School of Computing, Telecommunications and Networks is one
of the leading UK academies for Apple and Microsoft, having been
awarded membership of Microsoft's prestigious Developer Network
Academic Alliance. For over a decade the School has been working
with CISCO and is the leading training centre for Europe, the
Middle East and Africa. In 2010 six of CISCO's coveted graduate
posts were given to graduates from the School. Other graduates have
proceeded to work for companies such as IBM, Hewlett Packard,
Capgemini and Siemens. The School has a number of specialist
laboratories such as a Games lab, CISCO Networking labs,
Electronics lab, Embedded lab and a forensics lab which boasts
fingerprint readers and facial recognition software.
Birmingham City University is currently running a major
awareness campaign in the Midlands to demonstrate how it is
upgrading the future of individuals and companies.