Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) - Phase 3
Lead Research Organisation:
Queen's University Belfast
Department Name: Sch of Electronics, Elec Eng & Comp Sci
Abstract
Cyber-attacks such as those recently perpetrated on Solarwinds, Colonial Pipeline and Viasat are scaling at an alarming rate. Resilient cyber security technologies are vital to ensure that society can safely and confidently adopt new digital technologies. As our world becomes increasingly digitally connected for utilities, travel, healthcare, education, and commerce, and with the increasing use of artificial intelligence, cyber-physical infrastructure and the commercialisation of space-based entities, new security vulnerabilities are also emerging. This for novel cyber security solutions and secure technology supply chains presents key opportunities for research, innovation and economic impact.
Based at Queen's University Belfast, CSIT is a global research and innovation hub for cyber security, and the UK's Innovation and Knowledge Centre (IKC) for cyber security research. CSIT is therefore in a strong position to make further and significant contributions, maintaining the UK's international research reputation and enhancing its economic and business competitiveness. Through its unique open innovation model with trusted industry partners, CSIT is pioneering research and innovation to protect citizens and businesses and drive economic impact. CSIT's unique model of innovation incorporates a significant engineering and professional services capability differentiating it from other cyber security academic research centres. As a delivery partner of LORCA, the DCMS funded cyber security accelerator, CSIT supported the growth of 70+ UK cyber security companies through knowledge transfer and product development.
CSIT has successfully delivered during IKC Phases 1 and 2, and over the next 5 years we will consolidate and raise our level of impact nationally and internationally, continuing to fulfil our key role linking industry, government and academic expertise to promote economic growth. Under the theme of "Securing Complex Systems", CSIT will research and develop new technologies, acting as a nucleating point to accelerate and promote disruptive business opportunities that arise for the wider benefit of the UK cybersecurity industry. This will enable CSIT to seed new research activity in emerging areas of cyber security including, Semiconductor Chip Security, Secure and Resilient Cyber-Physical Infrastructure, Securing Machine Learning, as well as targeting Space Security as a new sectoral focus, with the aim of attracting new funding to drive collaborative research and innovation in these areas.
To raise our level of impact, CSIT will build Hubs of Impact with industry partners in one or more of the research areas identified above, modelled on the proposed 'Cyber-AI Technologies Hub' in which CSIT will partner with eight cyber security technology companies to collaborate on the development of new solutions to shared challenges.
We conservatively estimate that the £3M investment for CSIT3 could help to unlock up to £10.7M in economic impact across the UK, facilitated by job creation through research projects, support for economic clusters across the UK, engineering support for start-ups and scale-ups, and through public engagement with potential investors to the UK.
CSIT3 targets over the next 5 years include: (a) £12M in public research and innovation funding; (b) £900k in industry membership fees; (c) at least 5 examples of successful translation and IP activity from CSIT research; (d) 10 funded industry-academic collaborative projects; and (e) 1 Hub of Impact. Based on CSIT's track record, we fully expect to deliver additional impact beyond these targets and further strengthen the UK's reputation as a global leader in cyber security research and innovation.
Based at Queen's University Belfast, CSIT is a global research and innovation hub for cyber security, and the UK's Innovation and Knowledge Centre (IKC) for cyber security research. CSIT is therefore in a strong position to make further and significant contributions, maintaining the UK's international research reputation and enhancing its economic and business competitiveness. Through its unique open innovation model with trusted industry partners, CSIT is pioneering research and innovation to protect citizens and businesses and drive economic impact. CSIT's unique model of innovation incorporates a significant engineering and professional services capability differentiating it from other cyber security academic research centres. As a delivery partner of LORCA, the DCMS funded cyber security accelerator, CSIT supported the growth of 70+ UK cyber security companies through knowledge transfer and product development.
CSIT has successfully delivered during IKC Phases 1 and 2, and over the next 5 years we will consolidate and raise our level of impact nationally and internationally, continuing to fulfil our key role linking industry, government and academic expertise to promote economic growth. Under the theme of "Securing Complex Systems", CSIT will research and develop new technologies, acting as a nucleating point to accelerate and promote disruptive business opportunities that arise for the wider benefit of the UK cybersecurity industry. This will enable CSIT to seed new research activity in emerging areas of cyber security including, Semiconductor Chip Security, Secure and Resilient Cyber-Physical Infrastructure, Securing Machine Learning, as well as targeting Space Security as a new sectoral focus, with the aim of attracting new funding to drive collaborative research and innovation in these areas.
To raise our level of impact, CSIT will build Hubs of Impact with industry partners in one or more of the research areas identified above, modelled on the proposed 'Cyber-AI Technologies Hub' in which CSIT will partner with eight cyber security technology companies to collaborate on the development of new solutions to shared challenges.
We conservatively estimate that the £3M investment for CSIT3 could help to unlock up to £10.7M in economic impact across the UK, facilitated by job creation through research projects, support for economic clusters across the UK, engineering support for start-ups and scale-ups, and through public engagement with potential investors to the UK.
CSIT3 targets over the next 5 years include: (a) £12M in public research and innovation funding; (b) £900k in industry membership fees; (c) at least 5 examples of successful translation and IP activity from CSIT research; (d) 10 funded industry-academic collaborative projects; and (e) 1 Hub of Impact. Based on CSIT's track record, we fully expect to deliver additional impact beyond these targets and further strengthen the UK's reputation as a global leader in cyber security research and innovation.
Organisations
- Queen's University Belfast (Lead Research Organisation)
- Invest Northern Ireland (Project Partner)
- Royal Air Force (RAF) (Project Partner)
- Cynalytica International Ltd (Project Partner)
- Seagate (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- QT Technologies Ireland Limited (Project Partner)
- Ampliphae (Project Partner)
- Thales (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- NVIDIA Israel Ltd. (Project Partner)
- Northern Ireland Office (Project Partner)
- Rolls-Royce Corporation (Project Partner)
Publications
Allison D
(2023)
Digital Twin-Enhanced Incident Response for Cyber-Physical Systems
Black C
(2024)
Defeating Data Plane Attacks With Program Obfuscation
in IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing
Boyd J
(2023)
Voice spoofing detection for multiclass attack classification using deep learning
in Machine Learning with Applications
Cui Y
(2023)
An Efficient Ring Oscillator PUF Using Programmable Delay Units on FPGA
in ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems
Eckhart M
(2023)
Security-Enhancing Digital Twins: Characteristics, Indicators, and Future Perspectives
in IEEE Security & Privacy
Garms L
(2024)
Experimental Integration of Quantum Key Distribution and Post-Quantum Cryptography in a Hybrid Quantum-Safe Cryptosystem
in Advanced Quantum Technologies
Gaur V
(2023)
Abusive adversarial agents and attack strategies in cyber-physical systems
in CAAI Transactions on Intelligence Technology
Islam M
(2023)
SecureVolt: Enhancing Deep Neural Networks Security via Undervolting
in IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems
Islam M
(2023)
VPP: Privacy Preserving Machine Learning via Undervolting
Jegham I
(2023)
Deep learning-based hard spatial attention for driver in-vehicle action monitoring
in Expert Systems with Applications
Kamenou E
(2023)
LOFReg: An outlier-based regulariser for deep metric learning
in Computer Vision and Image Understanding
Khalil S
(2023)
Threat Modeling of Cyber-Physical Systems - A Case Study of a Microgrid System
in Computers & Security
Kundi D
(2022)
Ultra High-Speed Polynomial Multiplications for Lattice-Based Cryptography on FPGAs
in IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing
Majdoub Bhiri N
(2023)
Hand gesture recognition with focus on leap motion: An overview, real world challenges and future directions
in Expert Systems with Applications
Mcconkey R
(2024)
Runtime and Design Time Completeness Checking of Dangerous Android App Permissions Against GDPR
in IEEE Access
Mitchell J
(2024)
Generating sparse explanations for malicious Android opcode sequences using hierarchical LIME
in Computers & Security
Ni Z
(2023)
HPKA: A High-Performance CRYSTALS-Kyber Accelerator Exploring Efficient Pipelining
in IEEE Transactions on Computers
Ni Z
(2022)
A High-Performance SIKE Hardware Accelerator
in IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems
Ni Z
(2022)
A High Performance SIKE Accelerator With High Frequency and Low Area-Time Product
in IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs
Sharma V
(2022)
Functional Security and Trust in Ultra-Connected 6G Ecosystem
in EAI Endorsed Transactions on Industrial Networks and Intelligent Systems
Smyth D
(2023)
SECAP Switch-Defeating Topology Poisoning Attacks Using P4 Data Planes
in Journal of Network and Systems Management
Sonigara B
(2023)
XANDAR: Verification & Validation Approach for Safety-critical Systems
Tan T
(2023)
Post-Quantum Adversarial Modeling: A User's Perspective
in Computer
Tarchoun B
(2023)
Jedi: Entropy-Based Localization and Removal of Adversarial Patches
Wong Z
(2023)
KaratSaber: New Speed Records for Saber Polynomial Multiplication using Efficient Karatsuba FPGA Architecture
in IEEE Transactions on Computers
Yengec-Tasdemir S
(2023)
A Comparative Analysis of Security Patterns for Enhancing Security in Safety-Critical Systems
Yin C
(2023)
Secrecy Performance Analysis of Heterogeneous Networks With Unreliable Wireless Backhaul and Imperfect Channel Estimation
in IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology