Training tomorrow’s leaders in cyber security
As an Academic Centre of Excellence for Cyber Cecurity, the University is a hub of research, education and innovation on the topic. Around 45 postgraduate students are currently specialising in cyber security though their MScs and PhDs at Southampton. “We provide a stimulating environment for our students, including opportunities to work with companies such as IBM and Microsoft, which set real-world problems for our talented students to solve,” says Gary.
PhD student Zeyad Aaber’s research involves testing the performance of the government’s Cyber Essentials scheme that was set up to protect SMEs from threats online.
“In two years, we have devised a new approach to model threats facing SMEs and developed a new threat analysis method to evaluate an SME’s readiness to control current threats,” says Zeyad. “Many system designers try to apply human understanding in what a secure system can do, but computers are not as good at making decisions as we would like to think, so they often miss subtle things that we, as humans, easily spot. Through our research, we are ensuring that the rules we use to implement the secure systems behave the way we want them to.
“It has been a privilege to study here in Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton, working with world-class professors on national projects. This research environment has kept me challenged and has brought out the best in me,” Zeyad adds.
Small companies are increasingly using cloud-based systems, which are also vulnerable to security and privacy issues. PhD student Fatmah Akeel’s research focuses on devising a set of guidelines for building secure data integration systems that combine data from multiple data sources to resolve users’ queries. Organisations use data integration systems as a cloud service to provide better results for applications such as data analysis, visualisation, scientific research and national security. “In my opinion, it is essential to guarantee that data integration services continue to provide the needed functionality in a reliable and secure fashion. The current technologies on the web, including cloud services, require improved security and privacy, especially when handling sensitive and personal data, which are always at risk,” says Fatmah.
Working with colleagues in social science, business and engineering, the team also looks at how people make decisions on taking risks, how to keep documents secure when they leave an organisation, and cyber-to-physical attacks that could come from smart cars, smart meters, the ‘internet of things’ and security in manufacture. PhD student Nawfal Fadhel is working with Lloyd’s Register on a project to help manufacturing companies can protect their brands from cybercrime. “I would encourage young people to apply for cyber security degree as there is a huge technological gap that the UK government needs to fill to enable businesses to protect their intellectual property,” Nawfal says.