Better Planning for and Managing Asymmetric Threats to Australia's Security: Applying the Field Anomaly Relaxation (FAR) Systems Thinking Approach. Despite an enviable national security condition, Australia is at risk in an information-abundant world that increasingly spawns asymmetric threats such as information terrorism. What is needed are enhanced strategic and operational structures to improve the nation's security and ensure sound futures planning. This research focuses on applying the Fie ....Better Planning for and Managing Asymmetric Threats to Australia's Security: Applying the Field Anomaly Relaxation (FAR) Systems Thinking Approach. Despite an enviable national security condition, Australia is at risk in an information-abundant world that increasingly spawns asymmetric threats such as information terrorism. What is needed are enhanced strategic and operational structures to improve the nation's security and ensure sound futures planning. This research focuses on applying the Field Anomaly Relaxation (FAR) systems thinking approach to asymmetric information warfare threats to Australia. This is a new approach previously developed by ECU researchers investigating risk and innovation in the armed forces. It will now be extended to improve professional practice and the knowledge and skill base of Australia's information defence practitioners.Read moreRead less
Mapping Trusted Systems Technologies to E-security Requirements. A new software based approach, strongly guided by national and international security standards based upon mandatory access control, is required to simplify for management the protection of their information infrastructure. This will be in the form of a security definition toolset aligned to trusted systems technologies currently under consideration internationally. No such trusted system has been developed to address current comme ....Mapping Trusted Systems Technologies to E-security Requirements. A new software based approach, strongly guided by national and international security standards based upon mandatory access control, is required to simplify for management the protection of their information infrastructure. This will be in the form of a security definition toolset aligned to trusted systems technologies currently under consideration internationally. No such trusted system has been developed to address current commercial IT product environments. The safety and security of information systems against attack and illicit usage form an essential component of ?National Information Infrastructure Protection (NIIP)?, a move to better ?e-security?. Existing commercial (untrusted) operating systems lack the critical security bases for e-security making e-applications vulnerable to tampering and bypass which can cause failures in overall system security.Read moreRead less
Formally-Based Security Evaluation Procedures. Guaranteeing information security is of critical national importance, especially in the current political climate. Devices intended to safeguard Australia's electronic communications must be proven secure using leading-edge techniques. Currently, evaluation of such devices relies on informal procedures and the experience of individuals. This project will introduce more rigour into security evaluations by adapting techniques from the fields of saf ....Formally-Based Security Evaluation Procedures. Guaranteeing information security is of critical national importance, especially in the current political climate. Devices intended to safeguard Australia's electronic communications must be proven secure using leading-edge techniques. Currently, evaluation of such devices relies on informal procedures and the experience of individuals. This project will introduce more rigour into security evaluations by adapting techniques from the fields of safety analysis and formal methods. In particular, mathematical concepts will be introduced using notations suitable for use by security personnel with no prior formal methods experience. The outcomes of this project will enable more efficient and effective information security evaluations.Read moreRead less
Defending AI based FinTech Systems against Model Extraction Attacks. This project aims to develop new methods for defending artificial intelligence (AI) based FinTech systems from highly potent and insidious model extraction attacks whereby an adversary can steal the AI model from the system to cause intellectual property (IP) violation, business advantage disruption, and financial loss. This can be achieved by examining various attack models, creating active and utility-preserving defences, and ....Defending AI based FinTech Systems against Model Extraction Attacks. This project aims to develop new methods for defending artificial intelligence (AI) based FinTech systems from highly potent and insidious model extraction attacks whereby an adversary can steal the AI model from the system to cause intellectual property (IP) violation, business advantage disruption, and financial loss. This can be achieved by examining various attack models, creating active and utility-preserving defences, and inventing non-removable watermarks on AI models. The outcomes are new tools for securing AI-based FinTech systems before deployment and tools for IP violation forensics post-deployment. Such capabilities are beneficial by improving the security and safety of FinTech systems and other nationally critical AI systems.Read moreRead less
Trust-Oriented Social Relation Analysis and Social Relation Aware Rating Analysis in Trust Management. Trust management is an emerging field offering critical challenges on evaluating the quality and trustworthiness of objects, services and raters. Thus it requires the development of novel techniques and solutions to address these challenges both conceptually and practically. This project will develop innovative techniques to infer trust in complex social networks, detect bias in trust ratings a ....Trust-Oriented Social Relation Analysis and Social Relation Aware Rating Analysis in Trust Management. Trust management is an emerging field offering critical challenges on evaluating the quality and trustworthiness of objects, services and raters. Thus it requires the development of novel techniques and solutions to address these challenges both conceptually and practically. This project will develop innovative techniques to infer trust in complex social networks, detect bias in trust ratings and its dependencies with social relations. They can greatly contribute to breakthrough techniques enabling trust-oriented social network analysis and more objective trust management systems that can be transferred to the Australian IT industry to promote the trustworthiness of Web services and reduce monetary loss.Read moreRead less
Privacy-Preserving Classification for Big-Data Driven Network Traffic. Protecting sensitive information in large network traffic flows while ensuring data usability for classification emerges as a critical problem of increasing significance. Existing techniques do not work on highly heterogeneous traffic from big-data applications for both privacy protection and classification (such as port-based and load- based methods). This project investigates new theories, methods and techniques for solving ....Privacy-Preserving Classification for Big-Data Driven Network Traffic. Protecting sensitive information in large network traffic flows while ensuring data usability for classification emerges as a critical problem of increasing significance. Existing techniques do not work on highly heterogeneous traffic from big-data applications for both privacy protection and classification (such as port-based and load- based methods). This project investigates new theories, methods and techniques for solving this problem. It proposes to develop a set of effective methods for privacy-preserving data publication through combining randomisation with anonymisation, and for classifying the published data through uncertainty leveraging by probabilistic reasoning and accuracy lifting by inter-flow correlation analysis and active learning.Read moreRead less
Security for Peer-to-Peer Systems. The importance of adequate security for Internet and online services has been underscored by recent events. The protection of information infrastructures in this ever-increasing digital world has become essential for businesses, governments and individuals. Secure interactions over the Internet have become a strategic necessity and it is critically important for Australia to possess the technology to anticipate and respond to security threats to its industry an ....Security for Peer-to-Peer Systems. The importance of adequate security for Internet and online services has been underscored by recent events. The protection of information infrastructures in this ever-increasing digital world has become essential for businesses, governments and individuals. Secure interactions over the Internet have become a strategic necessity and it is critically important for Australia to possess the technology to anticipate and respond to security threats to its industry and society. The outcomes of this research project will result in secure and trustworthy computing technologies that will enable secure e-commerce applications and on-line services and trusted interactions between users over the Internet. Read moreRead less
Special Research Initiatives - Grant ID: SR0567386
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$98,000.00
Summary
Mechanisms for Ultra-secure Access to Large Repositories of Sensitive Data over the Grid. Large repositories of data that are typically geographically distributed and are subject to varying degrees of legal and ethical constraints are not available for open scientific research due to the sensitive and private nature of the information they contain, e.g. personal health records offer significant value for medical research, but are not readily available due to privacy legislation and the requireme ....Mechanisms for Ultra-secure Access to Large Repositories of Sensitive Data over the Grid. Large repositories of data that are typically geographically distributed and are subject to varying degrees of legal and ethical constraints are not available for open scientific research due to the sensitive and private nature of the information they contain, e.g. personal health records offer significant value for medical research, but are not readily available due to privacy legislation and the requirement to maintain end-user’s trust in healthcare information system. This project will build a demonstrator, based upon advanced cryptographic and information research and technologies to provide ultra-secure and sanitized access to this data via a data network grid.Read moreRead less
Privacy Protection in Distributed Data Mining. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has dramatically altered the world's social and economic landscape. 'From data to knowledge' is one of the priority challenges recognized by National ICT Australia. However, privacy concerns may prevent it from realization. This project aims to fulfil 'from data to knowledge' without breaching privacy of data from distributed resources held by different parties. The outcomes of this project will create ....Privacy Protection in Distributed Data Mining. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has dramatically altered the world's social and economic landscape. 'From data to knowledge' is one of the priority challenges recognized by National ICT Australia. However, privacy concerns may prevent it from realization. This project aims to fulfil 'from data to knowledge' without breaching privacy of data from distributed resources held by different parties. The outcomes of this project will create new directions in the research of privacy-preserving distributed data mining and are applicable to Australian counter-terrorism and homeland defence in detecting bio-terrorism from privacy sensitive data.Read moreRead less
Decentralised Data Management for Edge Caching Systems in 5G. This project aims to deliver a suite of decentralised data management approaches to facilitate practical edge caching systems in the 5G mobile edge computing (MEC) environment. Edge caching offers great promises for Australia's post-COVID economic recovery and resilience with the ability to enable real-time mobile and IoT software applications in various domains, e.g., telehealth, online learning/working, advanced manufacturing, etc. ....Decentralised Data Management for Edge Caching Systems in 5G. This project aims to deliver a suite of decentralised data management approaches to facilitate practical edge caching systems in the 5G mobile edge computing (MEC) environment. Edge caching offers great promises for Australia's post-COVID economic recovery and resilience with the ability to enable real-time mobile and IoT software applications in various domains, e.g., telehealth, online learning/working, advanced manufacturing, etc. This project tackles new and urgent challenges in edge data storage, manipulation, maintenance, and protection with optimisation, distributed consensus, graph analytics, and cryptography techniques. The outcomes should build the pillars of edge caching systems and promote Australia's 5G software innovations.Read moreRead less