New centre to train future leaders in cyber security

Professor Awais Rashid, Director of the TIPS-at-Scale CDT

Professor Adam Joinson, Deputy Director of the TIPS-at-Scale CDT

Press release issued: 2 October 2019

The University of Bristol, in partnership with the University of Bath, has launched a new Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Cyber Security, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

The interdisciplinary centre will train a new generation of researchers to tackle trust, identity, privacy and security (TIPS) issues in the large-scale, hyper-connected infrastructures of the future.

Innovations such as Internet of Things (IoT), smart grids and the growth in wireless sensor technologies, have serious security implications for the large-scale infrastructure that serve our everyday needs - including water, power, transportation, and manufacturing. These highly interconnected infrastructures will regularly collect, process or disseminate massive amounts of data - all the while delivering critical services to our homes and businesses.

The centre – addressing TIPS-at-Scale through an interdisciplinary lens – will be the first of its kind anywhere in the world.

Doctoral students will be trained in collaboration with industry and government organisations as well as international research centres – giving them a detailed understanding of the research, practice and policy challenges when addressing cyber security for such infrastructures.

Professor Awais Rashid, Professor of Cyber Security at the University of Bristol and Director of the TIPS-at-Scale CDT said:

“As we move towards a hyperconnected future, cyber-attacks form one of the major threats to national and international security.

“We need future leaders in academia and industry who are able to anticipate the myriad trust, identity, privacy and security challenges in complex infrastructures and develop solutions to overcome them.

“The interdisciplinary nature of our centre is key - such solutions will need to consider the highly intertwined nature of such infrastructures that include hardware, software and people – as designers, operators and users.”

Professor Adam Joinson, Professor of Information Systems at the University of Bath and Deputy Director of the TIPS-at-Scale CDT said:

“Research students will be trained from the very beginning by exploring TIPS in large-scale socio-technical infrastructures and, through their research and training, develop interdisciplinary approaches to address them.

“This will ensure that, throughout their doctoral studies, they understand the challenges of delivering cyber security at this unprecedented scale – and, hence, upon graduating, will be ready to tackle these challenges head on and lead programmes of work in academia and industry to secure our future infrastructures.”

Further details about this innovative EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Cyber Security can be found on cybersecurity-cdt.ac.uk.

Further information

About the Bristol Cyber Security Group

The University of Bristol Cyber Security Group in the Faculty of Engineering is part of the Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research (ACE-CSR) at Bristol. The group’s research focuses on three over-arching but interlinked strands: security of cyber-physical infrastructures, software security and human behaviours.

The Group participates in several major initiatives, including leading projects as part of the Research Institute on Science of Cyber Security (RISCS) and the Research Institute on Trustworthy Cyber-Physical Systems (RITICS), co-leading the Security and Safety stream within the UK Research Hub on Cyber Security of Internet of Things and leading the programme of work on developing a Cyber Security Body of Knowledge (CyBOK).