Seminars & Workshops
Dr Timothy Luke - October 2019
Lessons from Pinocchio: Statistical issues, methodological flaws, and paths forward in the science of human deception
Dr Timothy Luke is a Senior Lecturer in Legal Psychology at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Timothy joins our seminar series to discuss his research, which primarily deals with deception and its detection, as well as interviewing and interrogation in police and intelligence contexts.
Date: 31st Oct 2019 Time: 13.00pm - 14.30pm Location: D55
Followed by Tea, Coffee & Biscuits.
Deception researchers widely acknowledge that cues to deception - observable behaviours that may differ between truthful and deceptive messages - tend to be weak. Nevertheless, several deception cues have been reported with unusually large effect sizes, and some researchers have advocated the use of such cues as tools for detecting deceit and assessing credibility in practical contexts. Examining data from empirical deception cue research and using a series of Monte Carlo simulations, I demonstrate that many estimated effect sizes of deception cues may be greatly inflated by publication bias, small numbers of estimates, and low power. Simulations indicate the informational value of the present deception literature is quite low, such that it is not possible to determine whether any given effect is real or a false positive.
These conclusions have serious implications for both research and practice in contexts in which deception detection is important (e.g., law enforcement and security). For instance, theories about deception are thrown into doubt, given that much of their underlying evidence is so flawed. I warn against the hazards of relying on potentially illusory cues to deception, discussion statistical and methodological issues and offer some recommendations for improving the state of the science of deception.
Biography:
Timothy J. Luke is a senior lecturer of legal psychology at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, where he is also the Director of the Master’s Programme in Psychological Science. His research primarily deals with deception and its detection, as well as interviewing and interrogation in police and intelligence contexts. Recently, he has begun working on projects related to research methodology and statistics in psychology.
The Seminar Series is open to all, free to attend and requires registration. Please feel free to come along and meet with Dr Luke after with tea, coffee and biscuits.
Please register for free on Eventbrite
For additional queries, please email securitylancaster@lancaster.ac.uk
Dr Ryan Boyd - September 2019
Verbal Behaviour: Using Language Analysis to Capture Core Social and Psychological Processes
Dr Ryan Boyd is a Lecturer in Behavioral Analytics at Lancaster University. Ryan joins our seminar to discuss the utility of current methods in computerized text analysis for the social sciences, his recent research on the psychology of language, and future directions for social scientists who seek to use verbal behaviour to explore the depths of core psychological processes.
Date: 26th Sept 2019 Time: 13.00pm - 14.30pm Location: D55
Followed by Tea, Coffee & Biscuits.
Long before Psychology was formalized into a field of study, scholars have believed that a person's words are tightly interlinked with their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. For over 50 years, researchers have been developing computational approaches to quantifying samples of natural language to better understand people's psychology. With the evolution of both computational power and psychological theory, new frameworks have recently emerged that allow us to approach verbal behaviour in a manner that is more rigorous and scientific than ever before.
Biography:
Dr Ryan Boyd is a Lecturer in Behavioral Analytics at Lancaster University. His work primarily focuses on the relationship between verbal behaviour, personality, and motives - trying to understand how a person's words can reveal insights into why people do what they do. Dr Boyd has applied his research to various domains, including, human sexual behaviour, misinformation campaigns, political ideology. He is currently on the editorial boards for PLOS ONE and Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and is the developer of several widely-used, open-source text analysis programs.
The Seminar Series is open to all, free to attend and requires registration. Please feel free to come along and meet with Dr Boyd after with tea, coffee and biscuits.
Please register for free on Eventbrite.
For additional queries, please email securitylancaster@lancaster.ac.uk
Dr Bela Chatterjee - July 2019
Child sex dolls and robots: Challenging the boundaries of the child protection framework.
Dr Bella Chatterjee is a Senior Lecturer in Law at Lancaster University and Director of LLB Degree and Curriculum Development. Bela joins us to talk about her research which focuses on challenging the boundaries of the child protection framework. This Seminar seeks to initiate debate by asking; could and should child sex dolls and robots be caught by the child protection framework?
Date: 25th July 2019 Time: 13.00pm - 14.30pm Location: InfoLab21, D55
Followed by Tea, Coffee & Biscuits.
Foreign-made child sex dolls are now commercially available online, and recent cases indicate that their importation is a criminal offence. However, whilst there are growing calls for criminalisation, it is unclear as to where the law stands in relation to them and their robotic counterparts. This article seeks to initiate debate by asking; could and should child sex dolls and robots be caught by the child protection framework?
Considering core offences, it explores whether and where such items might fit within the current law. The argument proposed is that whilst there may be patchy coverage no single statute provides a convincing match. Drawing analogies to legal debates on child pornography, the article considers various justifications for criminalisation. Following a harm-based perspective, it proposes new crimes under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (‘SOA’) which address the creation, distribution and possession of child sex dolls and robots where a real child is involved in their creation. Where sex dolls and robots are fantasy creations, it is argued that different considerations arise and it is difficult to justify the same range of restrictions. Accordingly, separate SOA offences are suggested with an exception made for self-made artefacts that are intended solely for private use.
Biography:
Dr Bela Chatterjee is a Senior Lecturer in Law, and Director of LLB Degree and Curriculum Development. Her work interrogates interdisciplinary aspects of cyberlaw and has interests in cybercrime, international law/international humanitarian law, conflict/war, security, gender/sexuality. Her convenorship of the Law of Torts 103r from 2007 to 2014 formed the mainstay of her shortlisting to the OUP Law Teacher of the Year Awards 2013, nomination to the LawTeacher.Net Law Lecturer of the Year Awards 2013 and her institutional nomination for the HEA NTFS Scheme 2014 and 2016. Bela is on the editorial board of the Canadian Peer Reviewed Journal Frontiers of Legal Research, Gender and Women's Studies and the Dutch Journal for Women's Studies (to 2020)
The Seminar Series is open to all, free to attend and requires registration. Please feel free to come along and meet with Dr Chatterjee after with tea, coffee and biscuits.
Please register for free on Eventbrite. Register Here:
For additional queries, please email securitylancaster@lancaster.ac.uk
Nigel Hardacre - April 2019
Digital Forensics in Law Enforcement
Nigel Hardacre, MSc, is a Digital Forensic Investigator for Lancashire Constabulary, and joins us to talk about Digital Forensics in Law Enforcement. Digital forensic science is the process of obtaining, analysing and using digital evidence in investigations or criminal proceedings.
Date: 25th April 2019 Time: 13.00pm - 14.30pm Location: D55
Followed by Tea, Coffee & Biscuits.
Digital evidence ranges from images of child sexual exploitation to the location of a mobile phone. This seminar looks at how Digital forensics can be used to gather evidence in many criminal investigations, reviews how legislation on agencies’ powers to access communications is being debated and efforts to address challenges faced by practitioners.
During the seminar, Nigel will review the Sadie Hartley murder (Operation Kinross), and highlights how the digital side was so important in this case with the CCTV, phone, computer, open source, cell siting etc. For those wanting to review some of highlights of the case, you are able to watch the video “The murder of Sadie Hartley - Lancashire Police” here on YouTube.
Please note: The video contains content that you may find disturbing. The video has been created by Lancashire Police shared with Rock FM on how they carried out the investigation into Sadie Hartley's murder. Sadie was found dead at her home in Helmshore, Rossendale in January 2016 - She'd been shot with a stun gun and then stabbed to death. Rock FM's news coverage of the murder features in this video report as well as interviews with Sadie Hartley's family.
Biography:
Nigel is a Digital Forensic Investigator, who joined Lancashire Constabulary in 2000 starting as an assistant finance officer at the Training Centre, Hutton and quickly moving into the ICT department as an IT Liaison Officer for the Operations Division. From 2008, he has worked as a forensic computer technician in the Hi Tech Crime unit, now rebranded as DMIU (Digital Media Investigation Unit). He has recently graduated at University College Dublin with a Master of Science in Forensic Computing and Cyber Crime Investigation, and has delivered talks on Computer Forensics to students at Blackburn College and UCLAN in 2018. A level 3 NVQ in Education and Training has also been completed to further develop the experience and skills in DMIU as the unit continues to expand.
The Seminar Series is open to all and free to attend, so please feel free to come along, join the seminar and meet with Nigel after with refreshments.
Please register for free on Eventbrite.
For additional queries, please email securitylancaster@lancaster.ac.uk
Professor Dame Sue Black - March 2019
Am I unique? Identification of offenders from indecent images of children (IIOC)
Join us for our March seminar as we welcome Professor Dame Sue Black, our Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Engagement at Lancaster University, as she talks about her research which focuses on identification of perpetrators of criminal acts from video and still images, most commonly associated with offences against children.
Date: 28th March 2019 Time: 13.00pm - 14.30pm Location: Management School, LT01
Tea, Coffee & Biscuits.
We are all comfortable with the value of fingerprints as a reasonably reliable biometric and one that has a high discriminatory capacity in establishing the identity of an individual. But just how different is every human hand and is there a combinatorial approach that will allow us to go beyond the probability of even DNA to establish uniqueness? This talk will focus on previous research that has helped the courts to secure hundreds of years of prison sentencing for those who photograph the abuse of children. The new work about to commence at Lancaster intends to advance on this work and see the human hand develop as a new multimodal biometric that will challenge the way that we consider human variation.
Biography of speaker
Professor Dame Sue Black is Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Engagement at Lancaster University. She is an anatomist and a forensic anthropologist and her expertise has helped in many criminal investigations as well as war crimes in Kosovo and mass fatality events including the Asian tsunami. However, her research focuses on the identification of perpetrators of criminal acts from video and still images, most commonly associated with offences against children. With ERC funding, her team at Lancaster will be looking to automate the process of anatomical identification from images to determine whether the human hand really is unique.
The Seminar Series is open to all and free to attend, so please feel free to come along, join the seminar and meet with Professor Dame Sue Black after with tea, coffee and biscuits. Due to potential interest in this seminar, you will need to register your details on Eventbrite.
Professor Helen Sharp - January 2019
Secure code development in practice: community and culture
Helen Sharp is Professor of Software Engineering at the Open University, UK. Her research investigates professional software practice with a focus on human and social aspects of software development and she has been studying agile practice since 2000.
Date: 30th January 2019 Time: 13.00pm - 14.30pm Location: TBC
Followed by Tea, Coffee & Biscuits.
Software security is in the headlines on a regular basis. Researchers have asked why is it that we still have breaches, caused by common vulnerabilities, and there are some calls for developers to do more. However there has been little focus on the developers’ point of view, and understanding how security features in the day-to-day work of a development team. This is not a technical security seminar but one focused on reflection about security as non-specialist development practitioners see it in practice. The work presented has arisen through a project called “Motivating Jenny to write secure software: community and culture of coding”, funded by NCSC. We have been conducting ethnographic studies in physical and virtual settings with professional developers, focusing on the role that community and culture play in secure coding, and using motivation theory as a framework. This seminar will discuss our current results and future directions.
Bio:
Helen Sharp is Professor of Software Engineering at the Open University, UK. Her research investigates professional software practice with a focus on human and social aspects of software development and she has been studying agile practice since 2000. Sharp has led multi-disciplinary research projects into software practice with partners in the UK and abroad, and conducts her research exclusively in-situ with software practitioners in their industrial context. Sharp is joint author of one of the leading HCI textbooks, Interaction Design now in its 4th edition. She is also on the editorial board for EMSE and JSS, serves on the Advisory Board for IEEE Software and will chair ICSE’s software practice track in 2019.
The Seminar Series is open to all, so please feel free to drop-in on the day, or register your interest by contacting Paul Bennett for more details.
Superintendent Justin Srivastava - December 2018
Police Leadership & Vulnerability Demand
Superintendent Justin Srivastava of Lancashire Constabulary joins us for our December Seminar Series, talking about Police Leadership & Vulnerability Demand: Are current models of Police leadership fit for purpose in light of changing demand around vulnerability?
Date: 13th December 2018
Time: 13.00pm - 14.30pm
Location: InfoLab21, D55
Followed by Tea, Coffee & Biscuits.
Superintendent Justin Srivastava of Lancashire Constabulary join us for our December Seminar Series, talking about Police Leadership & Vulnerability Demand: Are current models of Police leadership fit for purpose in light of changing demand around vulnerability?
This exploratory study examines whether the current models of police leadership are fit for purpose in light of the complex and changing demands around policing vulnerability. A qualitative approach was utilised whereby seven semi-structured interviews were undertaken with senior leadership in UK/USA policing as they have the strongest influence on organisational culture in terms of developing future leaders (West, et al., 2014; Bauer, 2006).
The majority of participants felt that although there is a multitude of models of leadership across policing; none of them were designed to address vulnerability. A similar theme was identified in the literature suggesting that current leadership models were founded on aspirations and perceptions rather than a formalised skill base reflecting upstream, collaborative principles.
The study suggested the need for further research to look at a competency based approach towards policing the vulnerability agenda. Key skills for this approach would include: managing the police culture, emotional intelligence, intellect, compassion, empathy and developing a flexible and adaptable workforce. The study also found that the majority of the participants had experienced personal trauma that had influenced their leadership style across the vulnerability agenda.
Biography
Justin is a serving officer with Lancashire Constabulary. Since 2016, he has been the national lead for the National Police Chiefs Council and Chief Constable Andy Rhodes on the national Police and Health Consensus. This work involved the examination of how policing and health/social care partners can improve how they work together and address vulnerability demand. In February 2018, Justin was also appointed as senior implementation manager for the National Police Wellbeing Programme.
Prior to this Justin served in uniform and detective roles across Lancashire. He has been involved in developing and implementing the East Lancashire approach to Early Action and Early Intervention known as “Transforming Lives”. This multi-agency approach is based on developing a single point of entry for non-statutory interventions (step down), creating multi-disciplinary teams based in local communities and intervening with people with complex - Security needs who create demand for public and third sector organisations. Transforming Lives” is now being rolled out across the Lancashire area and has been nationally recognised by HMIC as good practice. In 2017, Justin graduated with an MSc course in “Early Action and Professional Practice” from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN) specialising in Adverse Childhood Experiences, leadership within an integrated partnership environment and developing learning organisations.
Prior to this, Justin was a Detective Chief Inspector and the Deputy Head of Public Protection for Lancashire Constabulary. His work included policy making, development and compliance for the Constabulary. Justin was the Constabulary lead on a number of portfolios including Safeguarding Children, Infant Death, Forced Marriage and Domestic Abuse. Justin has previously served in the ranks of Detective Constable, Detective Sergeant and Detective Inspector, DCI and Temp Detective Supt. on the Public Protection Units, and has worked on several high profile child murders within the Force Major Investigation Team (FMIT). Prior to joining Lancashire Constabulary, Justin worked on the National Crime Squad for England and Wales which involved the investigation of international drug smuggling, child trafficking and money laundering and he has previously served with Surrey and Humberside Police.
The Seminar Series is open to all, so please feel free to drop in on the day, join the seminar and meet with Justin after with tea, coffee and biscuits. For catering purposes, please register your attendance by emailing securitylancaster@lancaster.ac.uk
Professor Mark Levine - November 2018
Violence and its Discontents: groups and identities in security research
Mark Levine is a Professor of Social Psychology at Exeter University. His research focuses on the role of identities and group processes in pro-social and anti-social behaviour. In this talk, Mark will examine the ways in which the social psychology of groups and identities can contribute to the analysis of behaviour in the security domain.
Date: 29th November 2018Time: 13.00pm - 14.30pmLocation: D55
Followed by Tea, Coffee & Biscuits.
This seminar will describe a number of projects that use naturally occurring digital data as a way of studying security-related behaviour. This will include an analysis of CCTV footage of aggression and violence in public space. Mark will argue that this work points to the importance of understanding how third parties shape the trajectories of aggression to violence. Mark will also talk about an analysis of naturally occurring language in online spaces – and how this can be leveraged for studying the impact of identity processes as they relate to violence and crime.
Bio:
Mark is a Professor of Social Psychology at Exeter University. His research focuses on the role of identities and group processes in pro-social and anti-social behaviour. He is particularly interested in the research possibilities afforded by new technologies and digital data. This has included systematic behavioural analysis of CCTV footage of real-life violent incidents in public spaces in Britain, Netherlands, Denmark and South Africa. He has also used Immersive Virtual Environments to study the behaviour of bystanders in violent emergencies. More recently he has been using natural language processing of online data to explore how group processes can shape privacy concerns and privacy behaviour. He is also interested in exploring the utility of tracking and sensing technologies to examine interactions in public places.
Insp Christina Shorrock & Christy Frampton - October 2018
Vulnerable Caller Initiative
Insp Christina Shorrock & Christy Frampton of Lancashire Constabulary, along with Professor Stuart Kirby, join us for our October Seminar Series, talking about their Vulnerable Caller Initiative.
Date: 25th October 2018
Time: 13.00pm - 14.30pm
Location: InfoLab21, D55
Followed by Tea, Coffee & Biscuits.
Insp Christina Shorrock & Christy Frampton of Lancashire Constabulary, along with Professor Stuart Kirby, join us for our October Seminar Series, talking about their Vulnerable Caller Initiative.
Only 17% of calls to the UK police relate to crime and, of the remainder, those calls relating to public safety and welfare are rising significantly. The police are increasingly being viewed as an accessible service, providing wider social support, and being free at the point of access.
This study analyses and looks at new methods to respond to 1,546 high intensive callers, who made multiple requests for police help (one of whom called the police 94 times in a month). This study shows how members of an ‘Early Action Team’ analysed individual vulnerability and need, as well as how multi-agency responses were tailored to this need. An impact evaluation found that calls were reduced by 26% and police deployments by 6%. The study will also show the factors aligned with successful intervention.
Christina Shorrock
Christina joined Lancashire Constabulary in 1997 and has performed a variety of roles across the Constabulary, both operational and partnership based. She is a Police Inspector currently working on the strategic Early Action team. This involves negotiating and influencing partners across a wide range of public services and specifically building productive relationships with strategic individuals in partner agencies, which is absolutely vital to the overall delivery of the Early Action agenda and Public Service Lancashire.
Christy Frampton
Christy is a Force Intelligence Analyst who joined the constabulary in 2008 and has completed a number of analytical roles from Community Safety Partnership Analyst and Early Action Analyst. Her roles have required effective partnership working, advanced analytical abilities and proven project management skills. Christy recently has been the working closely with the local university evaluation team (UCLAN) for the evaluation of the Early Action Projects undertaken by the Lancashire Police. This successful partnership has led to a greater understanding of the projects and processes and is integral to the future of the force to ensure success in the Early Action agenda going forward.
Professor Stuart Kirby
Stuart Kirby is Professor of policing and criminal investigation works within the University of Central Lancashire (UK). His academic interests surround crime reduction, organised crime and policing. He acts as academic advisor to Her Majesties Inspector of Constabulary and National Police Chiefs Council (Crime), having advised and presented to police agencies in North America, China, India, UAE, and Europe. Prior to academia, he served with the Lancashire Constabulary, retiring as Detective Chief Superintendent in command of the HQ Specialist Crime & Operations Division. During his police career, he commanded many overt and covert policing operations and acted as a hostage negotiator, senior investigating officer, and stadium commander. He continues to act as a UK Behavioural Investigator Advisor (Offender Profiler).
The Seminar Series is open to all, so please feel free to drop in on the day, join the seminar and meet with Christina & Christy after with tea, coffee and biscuits. For catering purposes, please register your attendance by emailing securitylancaster@lancaster.ac.uk
Erin Gibbs Van Brunschot - September 2018
Crime Journeys: High-Risk Offending Across Space and Time
The study of crime over the life course emphasizes the location of individuals in space and time. In this paper, we examine those identified by the courts as ‘high-risk’ and consider their offending trajectories over a number of years.
Date: 27th Sept 2018
Time: 13.00pm - 14.30pm
Location: InfoLab21, D55
Followed by Tea, Coffee & Biscuits.
High-risk individuals tend to have criminal records reflecting prolific and/or serious offending occurring over both short and long periods of time, as well as occurring in a number of geographic locations. While official criminal records often capture only a portion of criminal activity, the spatial and temporal locations of high-risk offenders’ convictions and charges provide insight into individuals’ lives and associated stability and change over offending histories. We consider if and how spatial and temporal locations of offences as detailed in official criminal records influence the length, frequency and types of crimes characterizing high-risk offending careers. Our investigation examines stability and change in offence location (via convictions and charges) over time within individuals’ offending careers. We also consider the spatial and temporal clustering of offences across individuals in order to identify patterns associated with offending among this selection of offenders. We examine data from the official criminal records associated with individuals identified as high-risk offenders by a municipal police force in a large Canadian city. Future research and policy implications are considered.
Bio:
Erin Gibbs Van Brunschot is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Calgary. Her research interests lie in the study of risk as it applies to the realms of security, policing, offending and victimization. She is co-author of two books with Leslie Kennedy, Risk Balance and Security (2008 Sage) and The Risk in Crime (2009 Rowman and Littlefield). Risk Balance examines the agency perspective on a variety of hazards across contexts while The Risk in Crime examines the concept of risk in crime theory. Erin’s more recent work focuses on high-risk offenders from a life-course perspective and the management of these offenders from a policing and policy perspective. Related to this is her examination of various applications of technology, such as global positioning system (GPS) monitoring and body-worn cameras (BWCs), as means of reducing the risk of offending and improving security.
Miranda Mowbray - July 2018
Machine learning for Cyber security
Dr Miranda Mowbray is a Lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Bristol, and joins us for our July Seminar Series, talking about some of the difficulties with using machine learning for detecting Cyber security attacks on enterprise networks.
Date: 26th July 2018
Time: 13.00pm - 14.30pm
Location: InfoLab21, D55
Followed by Tea, Coffee & Biscuits.
Miranda's talk will talk about some of the difficulties with using machine learning for detecting cybersecurity attacks on enterprise networks, and ways to address them. The seminar will also talk about a successful application of machine learning for cybersecurity, using both supervised and unsupervised learning to detect some previously-unknown malware.
Mini-bio: Miranda Mowbray is a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Bristol, where her research interests include cybersecurity and big data ethics. Most of her career has been in industrial research, at HP. Her PhD is in Mathematics, from London University. She is a Fellow of the British Computer Society.
The Seminar Series is open to all, so please feel free to drop-in on the day, or register your interest by contacting Paul Bennett for more details.
Cath Goulding - May 2018
DNS - what's in a name?
Cath Goulding, Head of Cyber Security for Nominet UK, the company best known for running the .uk domain name registry, joins our Seminar Series to talk about how DNS works, and the cyber threats it faces.
Date: 17th May 2018Time: 13.00pm - 14.30pmLocation: InfoLab21, D55
Cath Goulding is Head of Cyber Security for Nominet UK, the company best known for running the .uk domain name registry.
Since 1996, Nominet has managed and run domain names that end in .uk and are now one of the worlds largest country code registries. With over 3m businesses and millions of more customers who rely on their domain registry services, Nominet is the UK’s official country-code domain. The Domain Name System (DNS) is critical to the operations of the Internet, and this talk will outline how DNS works and the cyber threats it faces. Cath will also give insight into her career and outline some of the lessons she has learnt along the way.
Biography
Head of Cyber Security, Nominet UK and Board member of the Women’s Security Society
Cath has 18 years’ experience in the cybersecurity profession, having worked for both the UK Government and the private sector. A thought leader in her field, she frequently speaks at security and internet conferences and has provided articles and comments for multiple publications. Her career was profiled in the Financial Times, and she has appeared on the BBC promoting women into the IT profession.
Cath currently works as Head of Cyber Security for Nominet UK, the internet company best known for running the ‘dot.uk’ registry and therefore critical to internet operations in the UK. Before joining Nominet, Cath worked at GCHQ holding a variety of posts in the field of cybersecurity. Cath has a BSc in Mathematics, an MSc in Human-Computer Interaction and is CISSP qualified. She was awarded Security Champion at the Women in IT awards 2015 and sits on the board of the Women’s Security Society.
Phil Warren - April 2018
Shipping containers, Russian criminals, American Spooks and Nuclear Weapons’: an intelligence-led case study of a cyber breach.
Phil Warren, Deputy Chief Information Security Officer at the Bank of England talks about the NotPetya cyber breach, the impact of these attacks and what we can learn.
Date: 26th April 2018Time: 13.00pm - 14.30pmLocation: InfoLab21, D55
Followed by Tea, Coffee & Biscuits.
The NotPetya cyber breach destroyed thousands of servers, PCs and applications and cost businesses hundreds of millions of pounds. The impact of these attacks can be deconstructed and traced through a murky world of criminality and hostile state-sponsored activities. However, what can we learn from this episode?
- Why there will be more of this activity to come
- How attackers lost control
- The challenge of attributing cyber-attacks and what we ‘don’t know’,
- What we can do about it
Bio:
Phil Warren is the Deputy Chief Information Security Officer at the Bank of England. Phil deputies for and runs many of the operations on behalf of the CISO against the broad portfolio of the Bank’s cyber mission: intelligence, investigations, policy, governance, risk, compliance, education and innovation. Phil is currently involved in a number of specific pieces of work aimed at developing cyber maturity in the Bank and sector: including the Bank’s internal enterprise-wide mitigation strategy, the renewal of RTGS and Project STRIDER, which aims to increase collaboration across the sector for cyber incident response. Phil is also part of the Bank’s privacy work – supporting the implementation of changes to meet GDPR compliance in May 2018. Prior to joining the Bank in 2014, Phil spent 10 years in government supporting national security requirements including cyber defence.
The Seminar Series is open to all, so please feel free to drop-in on the day, or register your interest by contacting Paul Bennett for more details.
Dr Adrian Venables - March 2018
The Importance of good process in Maritime Cyber Security
Dr Adrian Venables is a Commander in the Royal Naval Reserve, independent cyber security consultant and honorary researcher at Lancaster University, he has worked for both government and industry clients advising on computer security, including a part time role at the UK’s Defence Cyber School.
Date: 22st March 2018 Time: 13.00pm - 14.00pm Location: FASS Meeting Room 2
Followed by Tea, Coffee & Biscuits.
The use of the cyber security triad of confidentially, integrity, and availability is well established in describing the necessary attributes to ensure that information is safeguarded. To achieve each of these elements, another trio of factors is often considered comprising people, process and technology. Although advocates of this triptych of capabilities have previously acknowledged the equal status of each one, increasing importance is now being placed on the technology and people components and less on the process aspect. This has been demonstrated by some cybersecurity practitioners who have emphasised that security technology is at the heart of the enterprise and in the increasing focus of training and upskilling people who have been largely regarded as the greatest single vulnerability in any organisation.
This has resulted in the role of process attracting less interest in terms of resources and emphasis, which is now at risk of becoming the significant weakness within an overall security posture. This paper seeks to address this shortcoming by considering how the role of the process element of cybersecurity can be emphasised by highlighting its importance and, in using the maritime sector as a case study, what factors should be considered by policy makers to produce effective and efficient processes to align the technological and people elements as part of a comprehensive cyber security strategy.
Bio:
Dr Adrian Venables, served in the Royal Navy for 24 years as a Communications, Warfare, and Intelligence officer and was responsible for the provision and security of a range of Information Systems worldwide, including the management of specialist teams deployed to operational theatres.
Since leaving the Service, he has published a series of journal articles and research papers on the cyber threat landscape and its use by state and non-state actors for espionage, sabotage, and subversion within the maritime environment. A Certified Information System Security Professional and Certified Information System Manager, he holds seven computing and cyber security based degrees and is a Chartered Information Technology Professional Fellow of the British Computing Society, Chartered Engineer Member of the Institution of Engineering Technology and Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute.
More about the Defence Cyber School can be found here:
The Seminar Series is open to all, so please feel free to drop-in on the day, or register your interest by contacting Paul Bennett for more details.
Dr Budi Arief - January 2018
Earworms Make Bad Password: An Analysis of the Noke Smart Lock Manual Override.
Budi Arief, Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing at the University of Kent, presents a security analysis of the manual override feature of the Noke smart lock.
Date: 25th January 2018Time: 13.00pm - 14.00pmLocation: Infolab21, C60b/c
Followed by Tea, Coffee & Biscuits.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to make lives more comfortable and effortless, through various assistive products and services built using small, wireless devices; for example, to enable personalised services (in which the user gets their environment configured and presented to their preference) or multi-factor effortless and continuous authentication (where the user does not need to remember burdensome passwords but uses instead biometrics and other wearable tokens). However, these devices could also pose new large-scale privacy and security risks that are not properly understood yet, and constitute an ongoing research challenge.
This talk presents a security analysis of the manual override feature of the Noke smart lock. The Noke smart lock allows its user to operate, monitor and even share his smart lock with others through a smartphone. To counter the risk of being unable to open the lock when the smartphone is unavailable, it provides an override mechanism. Noke implements this override feature using a quick-click scheme, whereby its user can choose a sequence of eight to sixteen short and long shackle presses (similar to a Morse code).
Bio:
Budi Arief is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing at the University of Kent. His research interests are in cybercrime, the security and dependability of computer-based systems, cyber security education, and the Internet of Things, with a strong overarching element of interdisciplinary research. His current work focuses on the socio-technical aspects of ransomware, as part of the EPSRC EMPHASIS (EconoMical, PsycHologicAl and Societal Impact of RanSomware) project. He obtained his B.Sc. in Computing Science (First Class) and Ph.D. in Computing Science, both from Newcastle University. Prior to joining the University of Kent, Budi was a Senior Research Associate in the School of Computing Science at Newcastle University.
More about Budi Arief can be found here:
The Seminar Series is open to all, so please feel free to drop-in on the day, or register your interest by contacting Paul Bennett for more details.
Professor Aggelos Kiayias - November 2017
Proof of Stake Blockchain Protocols
Join us as Professor Kiayias presents recent results in the design and analysis of stake blockchain protocols. The talk covers the design strategy behind Ouroboros and Ouroboros Praos, as well as analysing the concept of forkable strings & string divergence which is at the core of the security analysis.
Date: 30th November 2017Time: 14.00pm - 15.00pmLocation: InfoLab21, D55.
Followed by Tea, Coffee & Biscuits.
We present recent results in the design and analysis of proof of stake blockchain protocols. The talk will cover the design strategy behind Ouroboros and Ouroboros Praos, as well as we will introduce and analyse the concept of forkable strings as well as string divergence which is at the core of the security analysis. The security analysis covers both the synchronous and partial synchronous model as well as static, delayed and fully adaptive corruptions.
Bio:
Aggelos Kiayias is chair in Cyber Security and Privacy and director of the Blockchain Technology Laboratory at the University of Edinburgh.
He is also the Chief Scientist at blockchain technology company IOHK. His research interests are in computer security, information security, applied cryptography and foundations of cryptography with a particular emphasis in blockchain technologies and distributed systems, e-voting and secure multiparty protocols as well as privacy and identity management.
His research has been funded by the Horizon 2020 programme (EU), the European Research Council (EU), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UK), the Secretariat of Research and Technology (Greece), the National Science Foundation (USA), the Department of Homeland Security (USA), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (USA).
He has received an ERC Starting Grant, a Marie Curie fellowship, an NSF Career Award, and a Fulbright Fellowship. He holds a PhD from the City University of New York and he is a graduate of the Mathematics department of the University of Athens. He has over 100 publications in journals and conference proceedings in the area. He currently serves as the program chair of the Financial Cryptography and Data Security conference 2017.
The Seminar Series is open to all, so please feel free to drop-in on the day, or register your interest by contacting Paul Bennett for more details.
Dr Pete Burnap - October 2017
Real Time Prediction of Drive By Download Attacks on Twitter.
Join Dr Pete Burnap from Cardiff University as he delivers his seminar on "the Real Time Prediction of Drive By Download Attacks on Twitter", where he explores his research of online social networks (ONS) and propagation of malicious or potentially dangerous content, leading to the risk of drive-by-downloads.
Date: 26th October 2017 Time: 14.00pm - 15.00pm Location: Infolab21, C60b/c
Followed by Tea, Coffee & Biscuits.
Our previous research has studied online social networks (ONSs) and propagation of malicious or potentially dangerous content (e.g. hate speech, suicidal ideation). People use online social media to find information about events in real-time (619k tweets per minute during FIFA world cup final) and cyber criminals take advantage of this to launch surreptitious attacks by posting links to malicious Web sites, leading to the risk of drive-by-downloads - URLs pointing to malicious servers but hidden in attractive content
Bio:
I am a Reader (Associate Professor) in Data Science & Cyber Analytics at Cardiff University. I lead the Social Computing research priority area in the School of Computer Science & Informatics’ Complex Systems research group. I have developed a reputation for data-driven, innovative, and interdisciplinary research that broadly contributes to the growing field of Data Science, working closely with the Cardiff School of Social Sciences and School of Engineering. I am an applied computer scientist with a principal focus on data and computational methods to improve understanding, operations and decision making outside of academia, while contributing to the academic fields of Social Computing, Web Science and Cybersecurity.
These three fields are integrated within my research through the analysis and understanding of Web-enabled human and software behaviour, with a particular interest in emerging and future risks posed to civil society, business (economies) and governments. I achieve this using computational methods such as machine learning and statistical data modelling, and interaction and behaviour mining, opinion mining and sentiment analysis to derive key features of interest.
My research outcomes, which include more than 60 academic articles – stemming from funded research projects worth over £10 million, are organised and disseminated via two research units:
The Social Data Science Lab, within which I am a director and the computational lead. The Lab’s core funding comes from a £450k ESRC grant and it forms part of the £64m ‘Big Data Network’. Core funding runs between 2017 and 2020, during which time the Lab will host 3 post-doctoral researchers and 9 PhD students, all studying topics related to Risk, Safety & Human/Cybersecurity.
The Airbus Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Analytics, within which I am the director. The centre works across industry, academia and government to provide a focus for cyber security analytics in the UK. Cyber security is a priority research area at Cardiff University, supported with strategic investment. Since 2012 we have established an interdisciplinary research team of technical and social researchers. Our collaborative projects have received more than £5m in funding from UK Research Councils (EPSRC, ESRC), Welsh Government (Endeavr Wales) and Industry (Airbus).