Security Device Sector Booms

The inventions that turned up this month at a competition to find the world's most promising security start-up sound like prop candidates for a James Bond film than the real world: explosion-proof curtains and a hand-held tester for exposure to nerve agents were featured alongside the winner, a night-vision camera that picks up infrared light, Reuters reports.

Such devices issue from the booming private security and defense sector, which has attracted more than $6B of investment this year in the US and Europe, almost double the 2006 investment. Western countries gearing up for a long battle with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups are eager for high-tech tools, and some investors say they find the sector more attractive than clean energy. (More counterterrorism stories.)