Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research - Lancaster University

The Lancaster Cyber Security Centre of Excellence is a multi-disciplinary centre spanning the School of Computing and Communications, the Department of Psychology and the University Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language (UCREL). The centre involves three full professors (Rashid, Hutchison, Honary), one Reader (Angelov), five senior lecturers (Race, Roedig, Taylor, Mauthe, Ed- wards) and one lecturer (Rayson). In addition, the centre has a dedicated member of staff (Dr. Daniel Prince) to manage its flagship Masters program in Cyber Security and the extensive relationships it has with industry and governmental security organisations. The centre team is further supported by a full-time software developer and a full-time administrator.

The centre is internationally renowned for its cyber security research on network resilience (Hutchison, Mauthe, Race), security of communications (Honary, Hutchison, Race, Edwards), securing mobile networks and embedded systems (Race, Edwards, Roedig), intelligent systems for analysing large, heterogeneous information sources (Rashid, Rayson, Taylor, Angelov) and studies of user behaviours and human factors leading to cyber security threats (Rashid, Taylor, Rayson). These permanent members of staff are supported by five postdoctoral research associates (Greenwood, Baron, Smith, Simpson, Schaeffer-Filho) and two research fellows (Walkerdine, Taylor). This research has been funded from a variety of sources including research councils (EPSRC, ESRC), the European Commission, JANET and direct investment from security organisations. Since Jan. 2007, the centre has received total research income of £3.7m from these sources. In addition, the centre has a thriving PhD program with 12 students completing their theses between Jan. 2007 and Dec. 2011 and another 15 starting their PhD studies. Most of the centre staff and students are principally housed in Infolab21, a £15m state-of-the-art research centre in ICT.

Two key principles permeate the centre's research ethos and hence distinguish it from typical cyber security research (i) its focus on multi-disciplinary research that combines traditional network security and communications mechanisms with approaches for large-scale data analysis and human behaviours informed by psychological and linguistic approaches, and (ii) its close engagement with stakeholders especially practitioners in cyber security in both governmental organisations and industry, who provide key requirements for our research and directly use our outputs.

The project's key focus is on maximising impact from the ACE-CSR status and funds. As such the project targets a number of stakeholder groups in industry, policing and governmental organisations interested in cyber-security. A number of mechanisms are built into the project work plan to engage with these various stakeholders. The secondments programme is specifically designed to ensure a close working relationship with such stakeholders by hosting them within the Lancaster ACE-CSR or by providing opportunities for Lancaster staff and students to spend a period of secondment at stakeholder sites. This will maximise the potential of transferring knowledge, tools and techniques from the ACE-CSR to industry and practice.

Additional mechanisms such as direct meetings with stakeholders and organisation of a UK All-Hands meeting are again designed to maximise the impact on industry and practice.

The ACE-CSR will not operate in isolation and there is an extensive network of industry, practice and community contacts open to us through existing projects under the umbrella of the ACE-CSR. All these will also provide invaluable pathways to impact from research within the ACE-CSR - in fact the ACE-CSR will enable us to harmonise these various contacts into a systematic approach for maximising impact from our cyber-security research.