Cyber Resiliency of Electric Vehicle Infrastructure [Self-Funded Students Only]

Cyber resiliency is one of the key requirements for constantly fighting against cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure. Research community as well as industry have realised that providing cyber resiliency is one of the key challenges as of now. It is a great need for more and better electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure that can offer resilience and manageable capabilities to such systems against potential cyber-attacks. EV infrastructure sits at the intersection of energy and transportation sectors, which will play a vital role in the future for achieving net-zero carbonisation. 

The School of Computer Science & Informatics has a strong emphasis on cyber security research due to recent grants, and also hosts the Airbus Centre of Excellence for Cyber Security and NCSC approved Academic Centres of Excellence in Cyber Security Research (ACE-CSR). Students attend research workshops and conferences, skills training through the Doctoral Academy, and have an opportunity to work with industry. A healthy research environment promotes research ideas and collaborations, and opportunities for networking through interdisciplinary work with the School of Engineering (Energy/EV research group).

Objectives: The objectives of this work are: (1) Identify potential use cases reflecting attacks on EV Infrastructure; (2) Build a model supporting test cases for cyber resiliency measures of effectiveness using resiliency scores and metrics, and how they can be characterized and derived in industrial control systems and/or cyber-physical systems settings. (3) Analysis and evaluation of effective resilience techniques including adaptive responses, analytic monitoring, separation, and dynamic representation, against cyber-attacks.

Indicative Deliverables:

• Surveys on risk, impact and state of the art: Cyber risks and resilience techniques for EV infrastructure
• Identifying potential threat cases and understanding MITRE & NIST resilience techniques and measures of effectiveness
• Develop a model to understand the effectiveness of resilience techniques and better situational awareness
• Apply resilience technique(s) against cyber-attack cases for better decision making
• Academic technical publications

Team:

Dr Neetesh Saxena

Prof Omer Rana

Academic Criteria:

A 2:1 or above Honours undergraduate degree or a master’s degree, in computing or a related subject. Applicants for whom English is not their first language must demonstrate their proficiency by obtaining an IELTS score of at least 6.5 overall, with a minimum of 6.0 in each skills component.

How to apply:

Please contact the supervisors of the project prior to submitting your application to discuss and develop an individual research proposal that builds on the information provided in this advert. Once you have developed the proposal with support from the supervisors, please submit your application following the instructions provided below

This project is accepting applications all year round, for self-funded candidates via https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/research/programmes/programme/computer-science-and-informatics 

In order to be considered candidates must submit the following information: 

• Supporting statement 
• CV 
• In the ‘Research Proposal’ section of the application enter the name of the project you are applying to and upload your Individual research proposal, as mentioned above in BOLD
• Qualification certificates and Transcripts
• Proof of Funding. For example, a letter of intent from your sponsor or confirmation of self-funded status (In the funding field of your application, insert Self-Funded)
• References x 2 
• Proof of English language (if applicable)

Please contact Dr. Neetesh Saxena to discuss this project.

If you have any questions or need more information, please contact COMSC-PGR@cardiff.ac.uk