Privacy-aware Smart Access Control for Internet-of-Things on Blockchain. This project aims to address privacy and trust issues in Internet-of-Things (IoT) access control mechanism of smart critical infrastructure. This project expects to generate new knowledge in the area of IoT access control by leveraging privacy-preserving techniques, blockchain, and machine learning. Expected outcomes of this project include enhanced capability to build improved techniques for privacy aware tamperproof IoT a ....Privacy-aware Smart Access Control for Internet-of-Things on Blockchain. This project aims to address privacy and trust issues in Internet-of-Things (IoT) access control mechanism of smart critical infrastructure. This project expects to generate new knowledge in the area of IoT access control by leveraging privacy-preserving techniques, blockchain, and machine learning. Expected outcomes of this project include enhanced capability to build improved techniques for privacy aware tamperproof IoT access control with machine learning based anomaly detection. This should provide significant benefits, such as preventing cyber threats on security and privacy of IoT and improving trust in IoT-enabled smart critical infrastructure of Australia.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE220100680
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$403,482.00
Summary
Making Anomaly Detection Interpretable & Actionable in Hostile Environments. Anomaly detection plays a vital role in cyber security to identify threat patterns hidden within large volumes of data. However, current approaches experience high false alarm rates in noisy, heterogeneous and adversarial environments. This project aims to identify and interpret anomalies that can disrupt system performance by introducing the concept of actionable anomalies. It will significantly advance the effectivene ....Making Anomaly Detection Interpretable & Actionable in Hostile Environments. Anomaly detection plays a vital role in cyber security to identify threat patterns hidden within large volumes of data. However, current approaches experience high false alarm rates in noisy, heterogeneous and adversarial environments. This project aims to identify and interpret anomalies that can disrupt system performance by introducing the concept of actionable anomalies. It will significantly advance the effectiveness of anomaly detection by developing algorithms that distil local and global structures of data to characterise actionable anomalies and explain their outlying aspects. Project outcomes will enhance the security, trustworthiness and fault-tolerance of critical systems, contributing to international efforts in cyber security.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE160100584
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$370,000.00
Summary
Secure and Private Machine Learning. This project intends to answer the question: How can machines learn from data when participants behave maliciously for personal gain? Machine learning and statistics are used in many technologies where participants have an incentive to game the system (eg internet ad placement, e-commerce rating systems, credit risk in finance, health analytics and smart utility grids). However, little is known about how well state-of-the-art statistical inference techniques ....Secure and Private Machine Learning. This project intends to answer the question: How can machines learn from data when participants behave maliciously for personal gain? Machine learning and statistics are used in many technologies where participants have an incentive to game the system (eg internet ad placement, e-commerce rating systems, credit risk in finance, health analytics and smart utility grids). However, little is known about how well state-of-the-art statistical inference techniques fare when data is manipulated by a malicious participant. The project's outcomes aim to ensure that statistical analysis is accurate while preserving data privacy, providing theoretical foundations of secure machine learning in adversarial domains. Potential applications range from cybersecurity defences to measures for balancing security and privacy interests.Read moreRead less
Intruder alert! detecting and classifying events in noisy time series. This project aims to address the mathematical challenges in automated early detection and classification of intrusion events in noisy time series generated from perimeter security systems. The project expects to develop robust methods to detect intrusion events under different operating environments while ignoring nuisance events. The project will boost the global competitiveness of the Australian security industry, and enabl ....Intruder alert! detecting and classifying events in noisy time series. This project aims to address the mathematical challenges in automated early detection and classification of intrusion events in noisy time series generated from perimeter security systems. The project expects to develop robust methods to detect intrusion events under different operating environments while ignoring nuisance events. The project will boost the global competitiveness of the Australian security industry, and enable improved event detection and classification in noisy time series to the benefit of many critical application areas beyond national security.Read moreRead less
Machine learning in adversarial environments. Machine learning underpins the technologies driving the economies of both Silicon Valley and Wall Street, from web search and ad placement, to stock predictions and efforts in fighting cybercrime. This project aims to answer the question: How can machines learn from data when contributors act maliciously for personal gain?
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE170100361
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$360,000.00
Summary
Towards reliable and robust machine learning systems. This project aims to protect machine learning systems from adversarial manipulation. Machine learning technologies are used in e-commerce, search, virtual assistants and self-driving cars. However, they are vulnerable to adversarial manipulations which are imperceptible to humans but can cause systems to fail, thereby undermining their usefulness or possibly causing disasters. Less vulnerable machine learning systems are expected to make futu ....Towards reliable and robust machine learning systems. This project aims to protect machine learning systems from adversarial manipulation. Machine learning technologies are used in e-commerce, search, virtual assistants and self-driving cars. However, they are vulnerable to adversarial manipulations which are imperceptible to humans but can cause systems to fail, thereby undermining their usefulness or possibly causing disasters. Less vulnerable machine learning systems are expected to make future autonomous systems, such as self-driving cars and autonomous robots, safer. This project will provide a deeper understanding of how machine learning systems can be made less vulnerable, thereby increasing the safety of future autonomous systems such as self-driving cars and autonomous robots.Read moreRead less
Optimising disease surveillance to support decision-making. COVID-19 has demonstrated the critical role of epidemic data and analytics in guiding government response to pandemic threats, reducing disease and saving lives. The demand for epidemic analytics for response to threats of national significance will only grow. The goals of this project are to 1) determine the combination(s) of surveillance methods that provide the most useful data for epidemic analysis and 2) translate these findings in ....Optimising disease surveillance to support decision-making. COVID-19 has demonstrated the critical role of epidemic data and analytics in guiding government response to pandemic threats, reducing disease and saving lives. The demand for epidemic analytics for response to threats of national significance will only grow. The goals of this project are to 1) determine the combination(s) of surveillance methods that provide the most useful data for epidemic analysis and 2) translate these findings into the blueprint for a next-generation infectious disease surveillance system for Australia. We will use a simulation-evaluation approach, coupling methods from infectious disease modelling with those from information theory optimal design. Outcomes will enable more tailored and effective pandemic response.Read moreRead less
Secure user authentication with continuous adaptive risk evaluation. Users typically authenticate to any given system only once - when they first access it (for example, through providing a password or fingerprint). The prevalence of single sign-on further allows this single authentication to be sufficient for access to multiple systems. Thus an adversary can obtain a large degree of access from stealing a single password, hijacking a user's session, or even simply borrowing their phone. This pr ....Secure user authentication with continuous adaptive risk evaluation. Users typically authenticate to any given system only once - when they first access it (for example, through providing a password or fingerprint). The prevalence of single sign-on further allows this single authentication to be sufficient for access to multiple systems. Thus an adversary can obtain a large degree of access from stealing a single password, hijacking a user's session, or even simply borrowing their phone. This project aims to develop a continuous authentication approach based on user behaviour - typical interactions plus biometrics (for example, keystroke dynamics) - combined with a risk adaptive assessment of the resources being accessed, resulting in re-authentication requests in the event of a suspected compromise.Read moreRead less
A fast and effective automated insider threat detection and prediction system. Threats from insiders directly compromises the security, privacy and integrity of Australian e-commerce, large databases and communication channels. This project will provide an essential step in combating this criminal activity by developing methods to detect such threats and secure the public's information against exposure and identity theft.