The UK is getting a cyber-security school with the opening of
a £30m centre to develop counter-measures to cyber attacks and
e-crime at Queen's University, Belfast.
The
Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT), which will
employ 80 staff, aims to become one of the UK's top centres for
cyber-security research.
John McCanny, who heads the centre, said the work is split into
academic training and research towards PhDs and security industry
engineering and product development.
CSIT's speciality research areas include ways of fighting botnet
attacks by very high-speed content analysis and traffic filtering,
pre-empting anti-social behaviour and street crime using real-time
analysis of CCTV imagery to alert police, and using encryption to
safeguard the trustworthiness of information stored electronically
at home and in the workplace.
McCanny said the centre will set honey traps to lure attackers
and develop an understanding of their attack methods. It will also
explore "steg analysis" (where images of secret information can be
hidden inside innocent pictures) to understand how secret
information might be exported from inside a company without being
detected.
Earlier this year the Cabinet Office said it would
hire and train penetration experts to detect, repair and
prevent cyberattacks from hostile countries. McCanny said the
centre's master's course in computer security would provide
training for such work.
The use of computers and networks to steal or compromise data
deliberately or by accident costs the country several billion
pounds a year, according to
government
figures.
Queen's University vice-chancellor Peter Gregson said 97% of UK
businesses now rely on the internet and computer systems. "Cyber
security is a global issue that affects us all. By coupling the
pioneering research at CSIT with economic development, Queen's will
secure the UK's position in cyberspace," he said.
The centre is one of the first Innovation and Knowledge Centres
(IKCs) created in the UK. More than 20 organisations, including BAE
Systems and Thales UK, will support CSIT's work over the next five
years.
McCanny said the CSIT is a partial response to national security
issues identified by the
Obama cyber security review, as well as recent
Cabinet
Office and
Chatham House reports on the subject.
The centre would also join forces with the
TRUST centre at Berkeley
University in California, Carnegie-Mellon University, which is home
to the US computer emergency response team
(US-CERT),
ETRI, the Korean
government's ICT R&D lab, and local universities such as
Royal Holloway.