City University in central London has launched a cross-disciplinary Centre for Cyber and Security Sciences, bringing together expertise from around the university to tackle the growing threats posed by cyber terrorism and cyber crime.
The Centre will unite researchers from an array of backgrounds – including information, network and physical security, cryptography, software reliability and systems science – to examine the complex cyber security landscape and the threats posed by both state-sponsored terrorism and organised crime.
“As the world moves rapidly and irreversibly towards web-based Government, infrastructure, commerce, retail, banking and social activity, we have inadvertently introduced more effective, easier and low cost paths through which societies can be attacked,” said Dr Muttukrishnan Rajarajan, a reader in information security systems at City.
“The university has many specialists in this area with experience of both advising Governments and industry and researching the latest trends. The new Centre will co-ordinate these efforts for the first time, and enable us to address a wider range of cyber security threats.”
Uncertainty of Identity research project
The launch of the Centre coincides with the start of The Uncertainty of Identity research project. This will examine the ways in which a person’s real identity can be linked to their virtual identity, hence addressing some of the issues faced by the Government in protecting critical national information infrastructures from cyber attacks.
City will collaborate with the Home Office, University College London and the University of St Andrews on the project, which has been funded with GB pound 1.2 million from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), of which City will receive GB pound 450,000.
Other City research in the field includes:
Further information about the Centre is Centre for Cyber and Security Sciences
ISACA leader welcomes London City University’s new Cyber and Security Sciences Centre
ISACA leader Professor John Walker has welcomed the creation of the new Centre for Cyber and Security Sciences at London City University, and says the resource will assist greatly in bolstering new influxes of security professionals to the IT industry.
According to Professor Walker CISM CITP FBCS, a security leader with the not-for-profit IT security association, there is now a pressing need for new blood in the IT security ranks, largely thanks to the growth in reliance on IT by UK organisations.
Centres like the new one at London City University will help encourage new professionals to enter the industry.
“LCU has a solid track record for innovation,” said Professor Walker. “Before it was made a university in 1966 it was an institute, and it created one of the UK’s first technical optics departments in 1904. In 1909, it saw its first students qualifying for University of London BSc degrees in engineering as internal students.”
After 1909, the institute was involved in aeronautics education. Two years ago, in 2009, the university’s School of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences celebrated the centenary of aeronautics at the site. “I have high hopes that in a century’s time, the university will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Cyber and Security Sciences Centre, although I suspect that the role of IT security professionals will have changed more than a little by then,” added Professor Walker.
Role of IT security professionals “drastically changed”
Walker – a visiting professor at Nottingham University’s School of Computing – feels the role of IT security professionals has drastically changed in the 25 years since the first PCs appeared in the world of business.
“Back in the 1980s,” he explained, “IT security professionals were involved in developing the first anti-virus and then firewall applications. Then, when the Internet arrived in earnest in the 1990s, further evolutions took place. Today, ISACA’s professionals – who now number almost 100,000 worldwide – are involved in a variety of corporate governance issues, as well as developing effective planning and deployment strategies surrounding the latest IT security defences.”
The Professor continued: “As we move into the second quarter-century of computers in the workplace, the advanced skill sets needed by tomorrow’s IT security professionals will increasingly be developed by organisations, such as ISACA, and university resources, such as those supplied by LCU’s new Cyber and Security Sciences Centre.”
“Many of my colleagues who helped developed those early strategies for the then-emerging field of IT security back in the 1980s are now coming up for their retirement, so the arrival of the new LCU centre – and the students it will train up in the years ahead – is warmly welcomed by my colleagues within ISACA and myself.”
Further information on ISACA
With 95,000 constituents in 160 countries, ISACA is a leading global provider of knowledge, certifications, community, advocacy and education on information systems (IS) assurance and security, enterprise governance and management of IT and IT-related risk and compliance.
Founded in 1969, the non-profit, independent ISACA hosts international conferences, publishes the ISACA Journal and develops international IS auditing and control standards which help its constituents ensure trust in, and value from, information systems.
It also advances and attests IT skills and knowledge through the globally respected Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), Certified in the Governance of Enterprise IT (CGEIT) and Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC) designations.
ISACA continually updates COBIT, which helps IT professionals and enterprise leaders fulfill their IT governance and management responsibilities.
