Far from elementary: confronting the cyber threat

With recent news that alphanumeric passwords may soon be a thing of the past – replaced by such futuristic options as digital tattoos, injected microchips, or keystroke biometrics within a decade - the race to maintain cyber security is becoming ever-more sophisticated.

The pace is unlikely to slow, given that cyber terrorists and the multi-million dollar industries that threaten our personal and financial security have access to their own high tech expertise.

In a bid to keep ahead of the game, Deakin’s new Centre for Cyber Security Research is set to unite cyber researchers across Deakin and become a world leader in cyber security research.

Director of the Centre, Professor Yang Xiang, explained that Australian cyber security research is already ranked 1st out of 15, compared to European countries with a strong IT focus, as well as Canada, New Zealand and the USA.

“The Centre’s mission aligns with the Federal Government’s nine National Research Priorities, with cyber security being the only IT/computer science priority,” said Professor Xiang.

“Deakin is ideally placed to position Australia in this way. We have developed a critical mass of researchers in cyber security. The researchers at the Centre have undertaken numerous Australian Research Council and industry-funded projects and published in world-leading journals.

“In fact, cyber security research at Deakin was a key factor in the 2015 ranking by the Academic Ranking of World Universities that placed Computer Science research at Deakin in the top 101-150 universities in the world.”

He said that the Centre is being led by six professors, who each has specific cyber expertise. Four are from the School of Information Technology, with expertise in network security, system security, cloud security, cyber physical security and big data security. The other two are from the Faculty of Business and Law, with expertise in cyber security policy and strategy, and cyber security legislation.

The researchers have worked with governments and industry, such as IBM, Trend Micro and DST Group.

The Centre also has a partnership with the world’s third largest anti-virus company, Trend Micro, with whom Deakin has undertaken various collaborative projects, including an ARC Linkage project centring on locating malicious web sites and domains.

Trend Micro is the market leader in server security, cloud security, and small business content security - offering Deakin researchers access to high performance computing facilities and a vast source of heterogeneous data.

Professor Xiang believes that, over the next few years, the major cyber threats are likely to come from Malware; cyber physical systems; social networks; and cyber terrorism.

“Cyber-crime is big business,” he said.

“It is being conducted by large organisations who are seeking access to billions of dollars’ worth of financial gain. Through the use of Malware, for instance, cyber criminals can insert a crypto locker, via the Internet, to make a computer unusable until a ransom has been paid. This was the ‘number one’ security threat in 2015.

“In the case of physical systems, more and more systems are being embedded into people’s lives, like the tiny devices in an electronic car key, and security is often not incorporated into the design.

“With cyber terrorism, the monitoring of social networking is likely to increase and become more sophisticated, to identify potential cyber terrorists.

“As the risks have grown, there has been a fundamental change in the way IT is approached by the industry over the past few years.

"When computers first emerged, the priority was to get the computer science right. Now, the first priority is to make the system secure at the beginning of the design phase.”