CyReSE: Cyber Security Research Software Engineering

There is a clear need among CSIT researchers, and the wider cyber security research community, for RSE support to develop software for driving research and potential commercialisation of results. This proposal will support a key research project into software-based approaches for IoT attack mitigation. It will establish a novel IoT testbed, including a set of intentionally vulnerable honeypots (a honeynet) to attract the latest attacks for analysis, and consumer devices to test processor-level software-based mitigations to threats. This testbed will also be employed for multi-disciplinary collaboration with University College London into IoT-based tech-abuse. Further I will provide RSE support to three existing research groups: CSIT's thriving Software-Defined Networking (SDN)-Network Function Virtualization (NFV) research group would benefit from a dedicated RSE to drive innovation in research areas where software is replacing traditional hardware-based approaches. I will also support software-driven research frameworks for the ICS security research group, investigating attacks on Critical National Infrastructure. The Malware research group, investigating malware detection by AI models built on dynamic assembly language, will be supported with novel software frameworks to derive research data on emerging threats, including fileless, expected-process and browser-based attacks. These stand-alone facilities will be connected to the CSIT Cyber Range, a £500k training and testing facility that enables simulation of real-world deployment models, and practice in attack and defence strategies. As a dedicated RSE, I will provide a central and consistent role in managing research software artefacts arising from CSIT's research, including the source code, documentation and datasets. This will be supported through the development of web applications to manage research code and data, ensuring the reproducibility, replicability and assurance of research outcomes.

A key aim of this proposal is to establish an RSE presence within the university, promoting RSE as a career pathway to attract and retain high level engineers. This has the potential to be the nucleus of the first RSE Chapter in Northern Ireland (NI). Significant time will be committed to outreach and citizenship activities, both within the university and externally, meeting aims of the Society of Research Software Engineers, and of the Fellowship.