KESS2 MRes Studentship: Deception Approaches for CNI

This is a funded MbyRes, including a generous stipend and tuition fees, with well-resourced circumstances for a successful scholarship.

Here is an exciting opportunity to study a system and its associated technology which could lead to entirely new approaches in Command and Control Systems. The selected candidate will apply their skills and ambition to construction of an advanced prototype system that can perform deception Approaches for CNI. This project will allow the student to develop transferable knowledge and skills in this most exciting and active field of networking and command and control research.

This Knowledge Economy Skills Scholarship (KESS) project will be held in the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Science at the University of South Wales. KESS is a programme funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) awarded by the Welsh European Funding Office (WEFO) in the Welsh Government. The project will focus on validating the feasibility of conducting command and control over a SCADA system via a 5G network. This will be achieved via the construction of an advanced prototype system.

This project is backed by THALES is a large multi-national national company with locations in Wales and the UK. Thales is a company that designs and builds electrical systems and provides services for the aerospace, defence, transportation and CNI/security markets. Recently THALES has created the National Digital Evaluation Centre (NDEC) in Wales. The goal of the NDEC is to function as a research and development platform through which technology can be demonstrated and transferred to a wide community. The R&D problem domain and themes for the NDEC are as follows:

· Critical National Infrastructure Protection (CNIP). This will include SCADA systems such as road and rail, as well as power generation and distribution.

· Critical Systems Design. This will include how to reduce complexity – decompose systems – how to measure security & build security into critical partitions.

· Proactive Cyber Defence (PCD). This will include data analytics for resilience/maintainability and computer/digital-systems forensics. In particular this area will focus upon mitigation strategies for evolving cyber threats.

· Autonomy and Industrial IOT. This will include novel systems for threat intelligence and artificial intelligence.

Programme of Research:

A system is typically dynamic and so can be manipulated in a variety of ways. Security can be thought of as a series of constraints attempting to restrict that manipulation. An attacker disrupts the system and manipulates the system in an undesirable manner. Due to the fact that an attacker can be more adaptive than the defender, the attacker will ultimately disrupt the system faster than a defender can constrain it. Deception technologies attempt to change this dynamic by disrupting the signals the attacker receives frustrating their ability to manipulate the system due to the false information being fed back to them. The challenge with this approach within CNI is to ensure that the process under control receives reliable signals whilst the attacker receives disruptive false signals. This work would identify means, by which to achieve this and what deceptive technology approaches would work within a complex CNI environment.

The project seeks to develop and validate a Deception Model for Industrial Process Control Systems in CNI. In particular, the aims of this project are as follows:
· To develop a Deception Approaches for CNI
· To validate that model through a series of case studies relating to Industrial Process Control Systems in CNI.
· Analyse and fuse multiple sources of data to develop deception process:
o To engage in enthrallment and ensnarement of an adversary.

Eligibility of Student
To be eligible to hold a KESS studentship, you must: · have a home address in East Wales area (details below)* at the time of registration. · have the right to take up paid work in the East Wales area* on completion of the scholarship. · be classified by the University as ‘home’ or ‘EU’ for tuition fees purposes according to the University’s guidelines. · satisfy University of South Wales’s admissions criteria: see below, qualifications and experience and application process.

Applications
To download an application package, please visit: Participant Application Package.

For any queries on eligibility, please contact: KESS Team at Research and Innovation Services, University of South Wales: [Email Address Removed] Tel: 01443 482578 For informal enquiries or further programme information, please contact: Dr Eric Llewellyn [Email Address Removed]
Closing date for applications: midnight Wednesday 20th November 2019