Partners and projects Cyber Security Research Centre

For the first three years of operation, the Cyber Security Research Centre finished the initial establishment phase, became a fully operational educational and research unit of the School of Computing and Digital Media and initiated the first international cooperation with overseas partners from India and the EU. During this period the Centre completed a number of research and innovation projects, some of them in collaboration with Lloyds Banking Group, making its strategic relationship with the bank truly sustainable. Even in the condition of an ongoing lockdown, the Centre continues working on several projects of strategic importance, using its own resources and partners resources. In the past three years the Cyber Security Research Centre has completed several research and innovation projects:

• Usability testing of voice-controlled devices in digital banking, funded by Lloyds Banking Group. Project Leader: Dr Vassil Vassilev.
• Threat intelligence modelling for predictive analytics, funded by Lloyds Banking Group. Project Leader: Dr Jun Li.
• Beacon-based authentication services for voice-controlled devices, funded by the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) under Innovate UK Cyber ASAP programme. Project Leader: Dr Vassil Vassilev.
• Logical analysis of the vulnerability in cross-channel banking operations, funded by Lloyds Banking Group. Project Leader: Dr Vassil Vassilev.
• Fraud analysis in digital banking, funded by Callsign. Project Leader: Professor Karim Ouazzane.

Currently, the research work of the Centre continues in a remote mode of operation on the following projects:

• Private Cloud Platform for Security Analytics, a strategic capacity-building project of the Centre funded by UK HEIF and UK REF. Project Leader: Dr Vassil Vassilev.
• Risk Assessment in Transaction Processing, a joint project with GATE Institute of Sofia University, funded by UK HEIF and EU Horizon2020. Project Leader: Dr Vassil Vassilev.
• Distributed Machine Learning in Video Analytics, an internal research project, funded by UK REF. Project Leader: Professor Karim Ouazzane.
• Collection and Processing of Environmental Data in Real-Time, a joint project in collaboration with the Centre for Telecommunications Technologies of Londonmet funded by UK HEIF. Project Leaders: Professor Bal Virdee and Professor Karim Ouazzane.
• Creating Digital Forensics Lab, an internal capacity building project, funded by the UK Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF). Project Leader: Dr Mohamed Ghanem.

In a series of conference meetings and online workshops over the last three years, the Centre initiated the first steps towards collaboration with five Indian universities in Delhi, Noida, Chennai, Phagwara and Mandi. During the last year, the Cyber Security Research Centre initiated a long-standing partnership with the GATE Centre for Big Data in Sofia, Bulgaria which already resulted in several joint publications and joint projects of mutual interest.

Together with its new partners the Centre is looking now for new exciting opportunities, which will build its truly international reputation as a Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security.

Technical support for the work of the Centre is provided by big vendors of networking and software equipment such as Cisco, Palo Alto, Amazon and Hortonworks.