Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT)
Lead Research Organisation:
Queen's University Belfast
Department Name: Sch of Electronics, Elec Eng & Comp Sci
Abstract
Recently the media has been awash with reports on the downloading and sharing of music files, a crisis which strikes at the economic viability of the entire global music industry. This is a startling reminder of the security challenges posed, in both the civil and criminal domains, as we move relentlessly to a world in which all Information Technology is fully connected, facilitated by the development and rapid uptake of Web 2.0. This, and its successors, will radically transform society in a way unimaginable a decade ago. However, with the accrued benefits come major threats in terms of privacy, security of information and vulnerability to external attack. Threats range, in the criminal domain, from the petty criminal stealing credit card details, through trouble making hacktivists, who attack organisations to further political aims, to the sinister cyber-terrorists, who attack strategic targets in the same way that terrorists would bomb and destroy national infrastructure. At the heart of the CSIT project is the perennial challenge of making all of the IT solutions, of today and tomorrow, secure. CSIT will be a world-class Research and Innovation centre coupling major research breakthroughs in Secure Information Technology with exciting developments in innovation and commercialisation.Information Technology in the widest sense deals with the use of electronic computers and computer software to convert, store, analyze, transmit, and retrieve information. So, the IT field covers every aspect of data processing from the banking using one's home PC with its (increasingly wireless) broadband connection, through to the complex systems which control and manage the world's aviation, maritime and telecommunications systems. As anyone who has had a virus, worm, Trojan or spyware on their home PC can readily testify, security is an essential requirement for any IT systems in order to retain privacy, integrity and trust. When electronic sensor devices and CCTV cameras are networked and combined with computer processing, IT then becomes a power enabling tool in the field of physical infrastructure protection, which includes fire monitoring, asset tracking and intrusion detection. Thus while IT security itself is often a matter of defending against automated attack by viral programs, IT for asset protection is a tool to assist the human operator. The IT systems used for infrastructure systems must themselves be secure not least because personal biometric data is increasingly being rolled out as a part of the solution.IT systems are analysed into a stack of independent layers along lines defined in international standards. CSIT staff are world leaders in academic research in these layers, an attribute which is reflected in the four initial fields of academic research: data systems, networks, wireless and intelligent surveillance. However a key distinguishing feature of CSIT is the fact that it understands, because of its history, the necessity to ultimately take a the holistic, or systems engineering, perspective in order to research and develop the creation of complete secure IT systems, which undoubtedly are greater than the sum of their layers. The involvement of many industrial partners in CSIT bears witness to this.The driving goal for CSIT is to strategically position U.K. industry at the forefront of the field of secure IT because this field is a critical, emerging and rapidly growing sector with its wider benefits for the safety and security of society. Embedded within Queen's University, with its very successful record of industrial collaboration and spin-out company formation, CSIT therefore lends itself well to a strong business and academic partnership, creating a continuous flow of knowledge transfer opportunities, with realizable shorter term milestones for transfer of the research, coupled with exciting opportunities for major breakthroughs and ensuing commercial opportunities for UK industry.
Organisations
- Queen's University Belfast (Lead Research Organisation)
- INNOVATE UK (Co-funder)
- Relay Software (Collaboration)
- Cisco Systems (Netherlands) (Collaboration)
- Thales Group (Collaboration)
- Intel (United States) (Collaboration)
- Autoline Insurance (Collaboration)
- Seven Technologies (Collaboration)
- Allstate (Collaboration)
- Replify (Collaboration)
- BAE Systems (United Kingdom) (Collaboration, Project Partner)
- Intel (Ireland) (Project Partner)
- NYSE Euronext (Project Partner)
- Qinetiq (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- ACIS (Project Partner)
- BT Group (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Intel Ireland Ltd (Project Partner)
- Catalyst (Project Partner)
- University of California, Berkeley (Project Partner)
- Thales (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Nortel (Project Partner)
- MINISTRY OF DEFENCE (Project Partner)
- Titan IC Systems (Project Partner)
- American Dynamics (Project Partner)
- Orange (France) (Project Partner)
- National Taiwan University (Project Partner)
- University College London (Project Partner)
- Microsoft (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- TDK Electronics Ireland Ltd (Project Partner)
- RWTH Aachen University (Project Partner)
- Royal Holloway University of London (Project Partner)
- European Centre for Connected Health (Project Partner)
- Cre8Ventures (Project Partner)
- Altera (United States) (Project Partner)
- Core Systems NI Limited (Project Partner)
- Vodafone (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- University of Cambridge (Project Partner)
- CEM Systems (Project Partner)
- Agilent Technologies UK Limited (Project Partner)
Publications
Abdelaty M
(2021)
GADoT: GAN-based Adversarial Training for Robust DDoS Attack Detection
Afendi,Tengku
(2014)
A frontal view gait recognition based on 3D imaging using a time of flight camera
Ahmaderaghi B
(2014)
Perceptual watermarking for Discrete Shearlet transform
Ahmederaghi B
(2013)
SPREAD SPECTRUM IMAGE WATERMARKING BASED ON THE DISCRETE SHEARLET TRANSFORM
in 4th European Workshop on Visual Information Processing (EUVIP 2013)
Ajao O
(2015)
A survey of location inference techniques on Twitter
in Journal of Information Science
Al Balushi,Abdullah Salim Ali
(2016)
Contextual Intrusion Alerts for SCADA Networks
Almashhadani A
(2022)
MFMCNS: a multi-feature and multi-classifier network-based system for ransomworm detection
in Computers & Security
Armstrong, R
(2014)
D7.2 Study of EU Legislation pertinent to Security
Arumugam T
(2011)
'High Speed Hardware Accelerated Regular Expression Processing
Baig A
(2014)
Cascaded multimodal biometric recognition framework
in IET Biometrics
Baig, A
(2010)
A novel modality independent score-level quality measure
Baldwin B
(2010)
FPGA Implementations of the Round Two SHA-3 Candidates
Baldwin B
(2010)
A Hardware Wrapper for the SHA-3 Hash Algorithms
Basagiannis S
(2015)
Smart Grid Security
Bauters K
(2016)
Combinations of Intelligent Methods and Applications
Description | This award like the other CSIT award were phased awards provided through the various stages of the IKC process and following interim review over the intial 5 year period of the IKC. The cummulative effect of this and the other CSIT award is summarised in the equivalent section for CSIT tranche 2, EP/J006238/1. Important achievements are covered in under this grant summary and not duplicated here despite some of these occurring in this period. |
Exploitation Route | Through publication and through extensive links with industry and government organisations as documented on our web site www.csit.qub.ac.uk. Through the creation of a new business cluster in Northern Ireland that now comprises ~50 companies. Through the creation of spin-off companies and through support for InvestNI and UKTI in the attraction of Foreign Direct Investment. Through the normal mechanisms of publication in high quality research journals and conferences including citations since received. |
Sectors | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Electronics Security and Diplomacy |
URL | http://www.csit.qub.ac.uk |
Description | From the outset, CSIT's vision was to establish a Global Innovation Hub for Cyber Security in order to promote growth in this strategically important sector of the UK economy. As documented below, there have been major achievements in the past five years. The Centre is increasingly recognised as a leader in cyber security technology research within academia. CSIT has created a unique 'Open Innovation' model that is successfully 'bridging the gap' to economic impact. Cyber security is still an emerging discipline but one that is growing rapidly. This is presenting exciting opportunities for research, new business and economic impact. CSIT is in a strong position to make further and significant contributions in all of these aspects and help position the UK in terms of international research reputation as well as scaling economic growth. |
First Year Of Impact | 2010 |
Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Electronics,Energy,Security and Diplomacy,Transport |
Impact Types | Economic |
Description | Accelerated Real-Time Information Extraction System (ARIES) |
Amount | £252,523 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/J020540/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 09/2012 |
End | 09/2013 |
Description | Allstate NI Ltd: Anomaly Detection System for Insurance Claim & Point of Sale Fraud Detection |
Amount | £677,096 (GBP) |
Organisation | Allstate |
Department | Allstate Northern Ireland |
Sector | Private |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 03/2016 |
End | 03/2019 |
Description | Automated Detection of Android Malware |
Amount | £30,000 (GBP) |
Organisation | Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 09/2013 |
End | 03/2014 |
Description | Contract Research for Titan IC Systems |
Amount | £150,000 (GBP) |
Organisation | Titan IC Systems |
Sector | Private |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 05/2012 |
End | 06/2013 |
Description | DCMS Funding |
Amount | £35,000 (GBP) |
Organisation | Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start |
Description | DSTL Security for the Internet of Things - Challenge 1 - Software PUFs as a Trust Anchor |
Amount | £49,767 (GBP) |
Funding ID | CDE41446 |
Organisation | Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (DSTL) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 01/2016 |
End | 03/2016 |
Description | EPSRC First Grant: Analysing and Detecting Advanced Multi-stage Attacks against ICS (ADAMA) |
Amount | £99,552 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/N022866/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 03/2016 |
End | 03/2018 |
Description | EU Framework Programme 7 (PRECYSE) |
Amount | € 441,620 (EUR) |
Funding ID | FP7- SEC-2013- 1-20121119 |
Organisation | European Commission |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 03/2014 |
End | 03/2017 |
Description | EU Framework Programme 7 (SPARKS) |
Amount | € 3,429,551 (EUR) |
Funding ID | FP7-SEC-2012- 1-28518/1 |
Organisation | European Commission |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 03/2014 |
End | 06/2017 |
Description | GCHQ PhD Studentship (Application Layer DDoS Attack Mitigation) |
Amount | £100,000 (GBP) |
Organisation | Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start |
Description | GCHQ PhD Studentship (Lattice based Post-Quantum Cryptography) |
Amount | £109,539 (GBP) |
Organisation | Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start |
Description | GCHQ PhD Studentship (Side Channel Attacks using Machine Learning Techniques) |
Amount | £100,000 (GBP) |
Organisation | Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start |
Description | GCHQ Project: SDN Security Application |
Amount | £37,819 (GBP) |
Organisation | Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 01/2016 |
End | 03/2016 |
Description | GCHQ Small Grants - 2016 |
Amount | £34,900 (GBP) |
Organisation | Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 01/2016 |
End | 03/2016 |
Description | HEFCE Strategic Development Fund (Catalyst Fund) project; SETsquared: Cognition Video iCURE |
Amount | £28,377 (GBP) |
Funding ID | 514603903 |
Organisation | Higher Education Funding Council for England |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 12/2015 |
End | 03/2016 |
Description | Horizon 2020 Cybersecurity, Trustworthy ICT (SAFEcrypto) |
Amount | € 1,036,405 (EUR) |
Funding ID | Grant agreement no: 644729 |
Organisation | European Commission |
Sector | Public |
Country | European Union (EU) |
Start | 01/2015 |
End | 12/2018 |
Description | Huawei Project: OpenFlow Multi-Table Analysis for SDN Security Solutions |
Amount | £126,378 (GBP) |
Organisation | Huawei Technologies |
Sector | Private |
Country | China |
Start | 03/2016 |
End | 03/2017 |
Description | Invest NI Phase 1 |
Amount | £4,371,307 (GBP) |
Funding ID | RD0709279 |
Organisation | Invest Northern Ireland |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 09/2010 |
End | 01/2017 |
Description | Invest NI Proof of Concept (Accelerated Video Forensics) |
Amount | £106,000 (GBP) |
Funding ID | PoC 458 |
Organisation | Invest Northern Ireland |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 12/2014 |
End | 06/2016 |
Description | Invest NI Proof of Concept (Columbus) |
Amount | £106,000 (GBP) |
Funding ID | PoC 457 |
Organisation | Invest Northern Ireland |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 12/2014 |
End | 06/2016 |
Description | Invest NI Proof of Concept (PUF-PKI: Authentication Platform for Machine-to-Machine Communications Systems) |
Amount | £106,000 (GBP) |
Funding ID | PoC 341 |
Organisation | Invest Northern Ireland |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start |
Description | Invest NI Proof of Concept (SDN Security) |
Amount | £105,000 (GBP) |
Funding ID | PoC 405 |
Organisation | Invest Northern Ireland |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 03/2014 |
End | 02/2016 |
Description | LEVERHULME DOCTORAL SCHOLARSHIPS: Leverhulme Interdisciplinary Network on Cybersecurity and Society (LINCS) |
Amount | £1,050,000 (GBP) |
Organisation | The Leverhulme Trust |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 09/2016 |
End | 09/2019 |
Description | Making remote working secure, resilient and reliable (IMES) |
Amount | £144,190 (GBP) |
Funding ID | 44178-323139 |
Organisation | Innovate UK |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 03/2015 |
End | 01/2017 |
Description | Network in Internet and Mobile Malicious Software (NIMBUS) |
Amount | £100,348 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/K003445/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 11/2012 |
End | 10/2015 |
Description | Providing Autonomous Capabilities for Evolving SCADA (PACES) |
Amount | £623,033 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/J012149/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 09/2012 |
End | 09/2015 |
Description | Research Institute in Trustworthy Industrial Control Systems Phase 2 (CAPRICA) |
Amount | £394,306 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/M002837/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 09/2014 |
End | 12/2016 |
Description | CSIT Industial Advisory Board |
Organisation | McAfee |
Country | United States |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Involvement in CSIT Industrial Advisory Board and membership scheme, providing market input into research problems and ensuring impact and commercialisation |
Start Year | 2010 |
Description | CSIT Industrial Advisory Board and membership scheme |
Organisation | CISCO Systems |
Country | United States |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Involvement in CSIT Industrial Advisory Board and membership scheme, informing the research agenda and ensuring market focus and commercial potential and impact. |
Start Year | 2011 |
Description | CSIT Membership Model |
Organisation | BAE Systems |
Department | Advanced Technology Centre |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | An independent Industrial Advisory Board made up of industry members who have joined CSIT to help guide and provide market input into the research direction. BAE give important market input to inform the research within CSIT and identify opportunitities for exploitation. |
Start Year | 2009 |
Description | CSIT Membership of Industrial Advisory Board |
Organisation | Thales Group |
Department | Thales Research & Technology (Uk) Ltd |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Contribution in both cash and in kind to CSIT Industrual Advisory Board and membership scheme. Market input to help inform the research agenda to ensure impact and commercialisation. |
Start Year | 2009 |
Description | KTP with Relay Software |
Organisation | Relay Software |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | TSB funded Knowledge Transfer Partnership on secure software for Insurance Industry |
Start Year | 2012 |
Description | KTP with Replify |
Organisation | Replify |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | TSB funded Knowledge Transfer Partnership on Secure WAN Optimisation |
Start Year | 2012 |
Description | KTP with Seven Technologies |
Organisation | Seven Technologies |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | A TSB funded Knowledge Transfer Partnership on secure WiFi |
Start Year | 2011 |
Description | Knowledge Transfer Partnership with AllState NI (Insurance Fraud Detection) |
Organisation | Allstate |
Department | Allstate Northern Ireland |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Application of advanced data analytics techniques to detection of Insurance Fraud. |
Collaborator Contribution | Deep engagement with CSIT staff and preparation of a large Grant for R&D which has been submitted to Invest NI. |
Impact | Too early |
Start Year | 2014 |
Description | Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Autoline Insurance (Vehicle Telematics) |
Organisation | Autoline Insurance |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Investigation of realtime streaming telematics from motor cars and application of advanced data analytics to determine driving style and risk factors. |
Collaborator Contribution | Access to datasets. |
Impact | Autoline now offer telematics based motor insurance policies and are gaining market share. |
Start Year | 2014 |
Company Name | Cognition Video |
Description | Cognition Video develops video-processing algorithms that can be customised for detection, classification, and tracking of particular people and objects. The core technologies focus on facial recognition, gender and age classification, vehicle and person detection, subject reacquisition, and event reasoning. |
Year Established | 2016 |
Impact | Cognition Video won the Enterprise Software category at INVENT in 2015 and graduated from Springboard at Catalyst Inc. later that year. The platform is currently being trialled for two different use cases around security and safety in the cyber-physical market. |
Website | http://cognitionvideo.co.uk/ |
Company Name | Liopa |
Description | Liopa develops biometric authorisation technology that requires no additional hardware, which learns a person's lip movements using a smartphone or laptop camera and can confirm their identity by asking them to read unique phrases out loud. |
Year Established | 2015 |
Impact | Liopa has been named the winner of the Software and Digital Media category, sponsored by Intel, at the 25k Awards. The team was one of two spin out ventures competing in this category being incubated by the Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) based at Queen's University Belfast's ECIT Institute. The prestigious annual 25k awards, which are sponsored by Bank of Ireland, are made under the NISP CONNECT entrepreneurship programme, based at the Northern Ireland Science Park in Belfast's Titanic Quarter. The awards are designed to showcase the most innovative research and intellectual property from the publicly funded institutions in Northern Ireland. Liopa were recently selected as a Finalist in the prestigious IPASCO ICT Security awards. Liopa's unique Lip-based Biometric Authentication solution impressed the judges in this highly competitive category. IPACSO is supported by the European Commission, and aims to improve the competitiveness of the European Cyber Security & Privacy market. Each year in October, Europe's most innovative and forward-thinking researchers and entrepreneurs gather in Brussels, recognising those who are bolstering Europe's cyber security landscape. With the awards, the IPACSO consortium, supported by the European Commission under FP7, support Privacy and Cyber Security Innovations 'Made in Europe'. |
Website | http://www.liopa.co.uk |
Company Name | Sensurity |
Description | Sensurity (formerly Microsense Solutions) develops intruder detection systems. |
Year Established | 2012 |
Impact | Sensurity was established to commercialise research undertaken by Professor Vincent Fusco and his team at QUB that resulted in a novel microwave fence for intrusion detection. |
Website | http://www.microwavefence.com |
Company Name | Titan IC Systems |
Description | Titan IC Systems has developed content and network processing hardware for cyber defence, network and cloud security appliances. |
Year Established | 2007 |
Impact | Titan IC Systems is delivering new benchmarks in both flexibility and performance for content inspection and network processing hardware. The unique technology capability offers customers the ability to perform regular expression processing and pattern matching acceleration at speeds of a few 100Mb/s up to 40Gb/s utilising a fully scalable, flexible and parallel architecture. This revolutionary new technology is capable of processing multiple characters and multiple regular expressions in parallel as concurrent tasks on several processing engines. Selected as one of the UK's 12 "most exciting" technology start-ups and invted to pitch their business at Number 10 Downing Street. Atracted £850k of funding via venture capital investments in 2015. |
Website | http://titan-ic.com |
Description | BBC News NI |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | Prof Maire O'Neill was interviewed by BBC NI News on her success in Horizon 2020 - the first such project to be co-ordinated in Northern Ireland. Broadcast on TV and Radio in April 2015. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
Description | BBC World Service Forum Programme on Codes and Ciphers |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | Prof Maire O'Neill was invited to participate in a BBC World Service programme called Forum which focused on codes and ciphers. The BBC World Service regularly attracts audiences in excess of 210 million people worldwide. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
Description | Global Grand Challenges Summit, co-organized by US National Academy of Engineering, UK Royal Academy of Engineering, and Chinese Academy of Engineering, Beijing |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | Prof Maire O'Neill attended the Summit and presented her work on the SAFEcrypto project in September 2015 in Beijing. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
Description | NIST Workshop on Cybersecurity in a Post-Quantum World |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Prof Maire O'Neill presented a paper on 'Practical Lattice-based Digital Signature Schemes' and Dr Liz O'Sullivan participated in a panel discussion on key management architectures for quantum-resisitant cryptography. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
Description | Royal Irish Academy/American Chamber of Commerce Innovation Awards 2015, 2016, 2017, Professor McCanny member of he awards committee |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | The US-Ireland Research Innovation Awards are a joint initiative of the Royal Irish Academy and the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland. They recognise and acknowledge exemplary ideas, originating in Irish organisations, making a social and economic impact through research innovation in meeting market needs involving collaboration with US companies. The Awards operate on an all-Ireland basis and are awarded in three categories: •Multinational Corporation Award •SME Award •Higher Education Award |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015,2016,2017 |
URL | https://www.ria.ie/grants-and-awards/us-ireland-research-innovation-awards |
Description | U105 Radio Interview |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | Gavin McWilliams was interviewed about the launch of the SAFEcrypto project and the growing importance of cybersecurity to the Northern Ireland economy. Broadcast in May 2015. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |