Oxford Uni Opens Cyber Security Centre

Oxford University has formed a cross-departmental Cyber Security Centre intended to combat the rising threat of attacks on personal, corporate and government security.

The new centre arrives amidst a growing sense of crisis around cyber-security, with former US counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke and FBI executive assistant director Shawn Henry among those who have recently spoken out on the issue.

Anticipating attacks

Oxford University’s centre will focus on the ability to “anticipate, deter, detect, resist and tolerate attacks, understand and predict cyber risks, and respond and recover effectively at all levels, whether individual, enterprise, national or across international markets”, the university stated.

It has gathered £5m in funding and will employ 12 permanent academic staff, 25 research staff and 18 doctoral students from departments across the university.

The world is now data-centric, with daily life depending on the security of social networks and online commerce, the university argued.

“This makes the protection of our digital assets and activities in cyberspace of critical importance,” the university stated. “But the challenge to understand cyber risk and deliver effective and accessible security becomes harder as technology continues to rapidly evolve and our systems become ever more complex.”

The centre’s research areas will include mitigating the risk of data breaches, reducing the financial impact when such breaches occur and minimising the impact of human error on security.

Hidden messages

Other areas of concentration are to include detecting insider threats in cloud computing environments, smartphone security, evaluating social networking risks, and the science of detecting terrorist information hidden within seemingly harmless messages.

High-profile data breaches in recent months have included Sony’s PlayStation Network, email marketing firm Epsilon, Citigroup and several military contractors.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said this week it will issue a decision on whether to punish Sony for the PSN breach within six weeks.

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