Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT)

Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) is sponsored by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). This centre focuses on secure information technologies, with potential applications in global health data security.

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.

Queen's University Belfast (Lead Research Organisation) Thales Group (Collaboration) Rolls Royce Group Plc (Collaboration) Invest Northern Ireland (Project Partner) Royal Air Force (RAF) (Project Partner) Cynalytica International Ltd (Project Partner) Seagate Technology (Ireland) (Project Partner) Northern Ireland Office (Project Partner) THALES UK LIMITED (Project Partner) Rolls Royce (International) (Project Partner) QT Technologies Ireland Limited (Project Partner) Ampliphae (Project Partner) http://orcid.

org/0000-0002-6865-6212 Paul Miller (Co-Investigator) Kieran McLaughlin (Co-Investigator) Jesus Martinez Del Rincon (Co-Investigator) The following are buttons which change the sort order, pressing the active button will toggle the sort order Author Name descending (press to sort ascending) What-if Analysis Framework for Digital Twins in 6G Wireless Network Management Digital Twin-Enhanced Incident Response for Cyber-Physical Systems Embedded Machine Learning for Cyber-Physical, IoT, and Edge Computing - Use Cases and Emerging Challenges AaN: Anti-adversarial Noise - A Novel Approach for Securing Machine Learning-based Wireless Communication Systems Investigation into the effect of batch size on batch normalisation during inference for image colourisation in IET Conference Proceedings Exploring Machine Learning Privacy/Utility Trade-Off from a Hyperparameters Lens 2MLMD: Multi-modal Leap Motion Dataset for Home Automation Hand Gesture Recognition Systems in Arabian Journal for Science and Engineering Defeating Data Plane Attacks With Program Obfuscation in IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing Investigation of Communication Overhead of SoC Lookaside Accelerators Voice spoofing detection for multiclass attack classification using deep learning in Machine Learning with Applications - The development of a security framework for O-RAN offloading procedures, addressing adversarial threats using predictive modelling.

The work also proposed mitigation strategies to enhance O-RAN security against cyber threats (2024) (Awarded best paper at the 10th EAI International Conference on Industrial Networks and Intelligent Systems, 2024) - The development of a multi-view deep learning architecture to optimize Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) vulnerability triage by reducing false positives.

Evaluation on a large real-world dataset demonstrates a 20% reduction in false positives and a 40% reduction in false negatives (2022). (Awarded best paper at the 15th ACM Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Security, 2022.)

- A novel method to visualise and localise malware within an executable file using explainable AI (XAI), making existing malware detection algorithms more interpretable (2023) - CSIT developed a proof-of-concept project with Salunda to apply CSIT's video analytics IP to use cases in the oil and gas industry (2023) - Collaborated with Nokia Bell Labs on the acceleration of Homomorphic Encryption using customised hardware for privacy preserving machine learning applications.

(2023) - A new threat modelling methodology that is supported by systematic asset identification, system modelling, and threat elicitation procedures for Cyber Physical Systems. the methodology was developed and adopted by a power systems company in Estonia to model cyber threats against their infrastructure. (2023).

- Jedi, a novel defense mechanism against adversarial physical patches in computer vision models. Unlike existing methods that struggle against GAN-based naturalistic attacks, Jedi introduces an information-theoretic approach to adversarial patch localization..

Experiments show that Jedi detects 90% of adversarial patches and recovers up to 94% of successful attacks, outperforming existing approaches (2023) - The use of a novel combination of two research paradigms, complex event processing (CEP) rules and unsupervised machine learning, for the first time, to achieve zero-shot attack detection in IoT environments.

(2023) Research that showed for the first time how hardware trojans can be easily designed into approximate circuits, thus demonstrating that designers considering using approximate circuits need to consider this threat in their designs. - The first fully data-driven approach to Hardware trojan (HT) detection based on gale-level netlists.

- DTA-PUF: a novel intrinsic software PUF design that exploits the instruction- and data-dependent dynamic timing behaviour of pipelined cores to provide a reliable challenge-response mechanism without requiring any extra hardware.

CSIT's unique model of innovation includes a dedicated business development and engineering team who work alongside the academics to pull-through research into new business opportunities, which allows us to collaborate and co-create solutions with companies of different sizes and deliver shorter term as well as longer term research and innovation projects.

Through this model, we can work with industry partners interested in our technologies to evaluate the key findings in within their companies.

Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Cyber Security Ecosystem Building: CSIT has been a critical resource in establishing and promoting Northern Ireland as a leading UK cyber security innovation ecosystem through spin-out commercialisation of research, the scale-up of local and regional businesses and attracting foreign direct investment.

CSIT's regional impact has ensured Northern Ireland continues to be the number one international investment location for US cyber security development projects (Source: fDi Markets FT, 2023). CSIT leveraged its unique position as a leading academic research centre in cyber security to bring industry leaders together to establish NI Cyber, the region's cyber security cluster.

NI Cyber works to foster collaboration, innovation, and growth across its vibrant community of industry, academic institutions and training providers, organisations, and individuals working in cyber security. It provides a platform for members and stakeholders to share knowledge, resources, and expertise in an inclusive environment that benefits all participants.

NI Cyber both supports and represents the region's cyber security community, ensuring that NI remains an attractive and innovative location for cyber security companies to form and scale. Since its inception, NI Cyber has built strong connections locally and nationally, working with Cyber Ireland and the wider UKC3 cybersecurity cluster collaboration ecosystem.

This burgeoning cyber security innovation ecosystem has grown significantly and now numbers 120+ companies employing approximately 2,750 cyber security professionals generating over £237m direct GVA to the economy (Source: NI Cyber security Snapshot, 2024), with an ambition to reach 5,000 by 2030.

CSIT Impact on UK Cyber Security Innovation: CSIT is a delivery partner on Cyber Runway, the UK's largest cyber security accelerator, funded by the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). Cyber Runway works with founders from idea to scale-up to fast-track their growth. Since 2021 CSIT has worked with Cyber Runway to support over 250 companies to launch products, raise funding and secure pilots.

It is a truly national programme, and has welcomed startups from across the UK. Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Joint UK-US report on 'Security in the Era of Global Semiconductor Initiatives', July 2024 Multiple continents/international Contribution to a national consultation/review https://www. ukrise.

org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/GlobalSemiconductorInitiatives_v3. pdf Shaping the Metaverse: Policy Engagement with Immersive technologies in the UK - July 2023 Contribution to a national consultation/review https://pure. qub.

ac. uk/files/528553024/Metaverse_report_final.

pdf AI UK: Creating an International Ecosystem for Responsible AI Research and Innovation Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) AI for Productive Research & Innovation in eLectronics (APRIL) Hub Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) D-Ron: Rogue behaviour detection in the drone swarms using digital twins (Phase-2) Department for Science, Innovation and Technology Digital Twins for Cyber-Physical Cyber Security Higher Education Authority EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Future Open SecuRe NeTworks (CDT-FORT) Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Enhanced security and tamper protection using software Multi-PUF - Y2 Exploring operational capabilities of Arm Morello for security configurations of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Ministry of Defence (MOD) Hardware Security for Approximate Computing Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Homomorphic Encryption Platform IAA Additional allocation - Equipment -ADK-VA600 Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) INTEGRATED QUANTUM NETWORKS (IQN) RESEARCH HUB Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Metaverse Phase 2 Project Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport National Cyber Security Centre NICYBER CSIT Doctoral Training Programme Update NIO New Deal Cyber Bid -AIDE_NICYBER2025 NIO New Deal Cyber Bid -AIDE_NICYBER2025 QRICSec: AI Security for Open Networks ReImagining Supply Chains Network Plus (RiSC+) Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) Rolls Royce Counterfact Reasoning SCHEME (Safety Critical Harsh Environment Micro-processing Evolution) SPRITE+ 2: The Security, Privacy, Identity and Trust Engagement Networkplus (phase 2).

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Shooting Star proposal with Thales Thales Research & Technology (Uk) Ltd T6: Trustworthy Traceable Terrestrial Time Transfer Technology TUDOR: Towards Ubiquitous 3D Open Resilient Network TruDetect: Trustworthy Deep-Learning based Hardware Trojan Detection Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Trustworthy Distributed Brain-inspired Systems: Theoretical Basis and Hardware Implementation Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Trustworthy Distributed Brain-inspired Systems: Theoretical Basis and Hardware Implementation Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) University Directed Grant in support of Queens University Belfast Doctoral Training Program for Emerging Areas of Cyber Security University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Qualcomm (guest lecture to MSc students Nov22) Collaborator Contribution In kind contribution: Qualcomm (guest lecture to MSc students Nov22) to the value of £1000 Qualcomm (guest lecture to MSc students Nov22) CSIT Membership Rolls Royce Collaborator Contribution Collaborator Contribution Thales (Deep dive day with NI team; CyberAI Hub - exploring project) Co-organiser of 36th IEEE International System-On-Chip Conference (Prof Sakir Sezer) Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar Professional Practitioners SOCC offers a three days technical program including keynote and plenary speeches, oral and poster presentations, hot-topic panel sessions, and one day of tutorials and industrial talks.

Year(s) Of Engagement Activity Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar CYBERUK 2023 was the UK government's flagship cyber security event hosted by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). It took place in Belfast on April 19-20, 2023. The theme of the event was "Securing an Open and Resilient Digital Future."

Over 2,000 cyber security leaders and professionals gathered to discuss and collaborate on the future of cyber security.

The conference featured expert speakers, networking opportunities, and engagement with over 100 technology and cyber security organizations Year(s) Of Engagement Activity Exhibited at DSEI, London Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar Exhibited at DSEI, London Year(s) Of Engagement Activity https://www. dsei. co.

uk/publications NI Cyber Breakfast event, monthly Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar This monthly breakfast club is an open house session to keep the cluster members, partners, stakeholders up to date on NI Cyber and each other's business. Year(s) Of Engagement Activity https://cyberexchange. uk.

net/events/ni-cyber-the-breakfast-club/ NI Cyber Tech & Tipples event, June 2023 Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar These engaging events have provided a platform for our members to delve into cutting-edge topics, exchange knowledge, and ignite meaningful discussions. We're aware that not everyone gets the opportunity to hear these talks so, we're bringing some of them to you!

Year(s) Of Engagement Activity https://ukc3. co. uk/event/ni-cyber-tech-tipples-midsummer-edition/ NI Investment Summit, Sept 2023, Máire O'Neill Form Of Engagement Activity The Summit was a significant economic and forward-looking moment, bringing together one of the largest groups of international investors and businesses and highlighting that Northern Ireland is a fantastic place to live, work and do business.

The event profiled Northern Ireland's innovative and technological strengths, which are admired on the international stage. In particular, it focused on financial and professional services, life and health sciences, the green economy, advanced manufacturing and engineering, technology, the creative industries and capital investment. Year(s) Of Engagement Activity https://www.

events. great. gov.uk/website/11559/northern-ireland-investment-summit-2023/ UK Cyber Security Sectoral Analysis 2023 & 2024, DCMS/DSIT (Published) Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview UK Cyber Security Sectoral Analysis 2023 & 2024, DCMS/DSIT Year(s) Of Engagement Activity