Information Technology Security
From banking to health to defence, protecting the security of information and the privacy of people are critical. Researchers in IT Security are interested in answering questions such as:
(1) How can we best use Information Technology to meet the security needs of the society?
(2) How can we ensure that the information collected, processed, stored and transferred using computing and communication technologies remain secure?
(3) How can we improve security protocols as computing and communication technologies become faster and more powerful?
In answering such questions, IT security researchers also need to work with experts from other disciplines to contribute to multidisciplinary research in areas such as bio-security, security policy research etc.
Projects
At the University of New England, researchers work in the following areas of IT security. We welcome research collaboration and post graduate students (PhD, Masters or Honours). If you are interested, please free to contact the lead researcher mentioned alongside each project.
Access Control Mechanisms (Dr Mark Evered)
Security at the level of operating systems involves the specification and implementation of access control protocols. Rasp is a formal access constraint specification language based on role and attribute transitions. Further work involves research into automatic generation of secure access environments from Rasp specifications and a formal semantic framework for the Rasp language.
We are also interested in natural language specification of access control requirements. A topic of interest in this area is link-grammar parsing of natural language access-control constraint phrases.
Information security and privacy in Health Information Systems (Dr Mark Evered)
Security in Health Information Systems is critical since it involves medical records of patients. A number of postgraduate research projects are available including the development of a mobile capability-based patient information system and specification, and implementation of access control for the eSteps health questionnaire software.
Digital watermarking of multimedia signals (Dr Ashoka Jayawardena)
Watermarking is generally used to stamp the ownership of a document. Digital watermarking applies similar principles for digital documents. As digital objects increasingly involve audio, video and other multimedia signals, watermarking becomes more challenging. This project investigates techniques for digital watermarking of multimedia objects.
Trust management for peer to peer systems (Dr Ashoka Jayawardena)
This project investigates how trust influences the evolution of peer to peer systems. In a peer to peer system, the nodes in the network are equal thus a node can function as a client or a server to other nodes in the network. Many social networks are designed using peer to peer concepts. The trust is used to assess individual nodes or groups of nodes for various applications which run on peer to peer networks such as file sharing, e-markets etc.
Digital rights management (Dr Ashoka Jayawardena)
Digital rights management refers to access control technologies designed to control usage of digital assets. This project aims to develop such technologies targeting peer to peer environments.
Fingerprint Matching using Robust Shape Descriptors (Dr Paul Kwan)
This project aims to develop accurate fingerprint matching algorithm by proposing novel shape descriptors that are robust to noise and non-rigid deformations. The fingerprint features used are minutiae characterized by ridge endings and bifurcations. The project outcome is useful both to forensic applications and non-forensic ones like secured access, network logins, etc.
Learning Framework for Adaptive Fingerprint Identification (Dr Paul Kwan)
This project aims to develop an adaptive learning framework for examiner-centric fingerprint identification. Whereas most Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems (AFIS) have a static processing architecture that limits their performance, in this research we make use of a novel integration of relevance feedback and dimensionality reduction methods to construct a dynamic, personalized and persistent semantic space for each examiner that can improve the final identification outcome. The project outcome can enhance existing AFIS as an add-on module.
Similarity Search in Very Large Biometric Databases (Dr Paul Kwan)
Many strategies for similarity search in image databases assume a metric and quadratic form-based similarity model where an optimal lower bounding distance function exists for filtering. Recent research on robust matching methods for computer vision has discovered that similarity models behind human visual judgment are inherently non-metric. When applying such models to search in very large image database, one has to address the problem of non-metric distance functions that might not have an optimal lower bound for filtering. In this project, we aim to develop a novel three-step "prune-filter-refine" strategy for approximate similarity search in very large biometric database. The project outcome is significant for increasing the retrieval performance of national AFIS against an ever-growing fingerprint database.
Other possible projects in biometrics include: Multimodal Biometric Person Authentication by Fusing Face, Hand and Fingerprint Geometric Cues, Minutiae-based Matching Algorithms for Fingerprint Recognition, Graphical User Interface for Online Fingerprint Verification and Dimensionality Reduction Methods for Fingerprint Clustering and Visualization (Dr Paul Kwan)
Performance evaluation of security protocols (Professor A. S. M. Sajeev)
Wired and wireless networks use a number of security protocols to protect data from malicious or even unintentional access. It is important to know which protocols are effective under what circumstances. This project investigates the systematic evaluation of security protocols in order to assess their strengths & limitations including vulnerability to attacks, performance and behaviour under stress.
Security in digital economy (Professor A. S. M. Sajeev)
The Internet has provided an alternate to the traditional bricks-and-mortar way of running the economy. In sparsely populated areas such as regional Australia, it could help provide services in a cost-efficient manner. The public key infrastructure (PKI) using digital certificates is a key component of the digital world. This project investigates the information technology challenges in running a secure digital economy.
Cryptography (Dr Charles Watson)
Cryptography is the science of encrypting data to maintain their integrity and prevent unauthorised access. We study cryptographic techniques for encryption and decryption of data. Currently, we are investigating the complexity of factorization algorithms and state prediction in black-box ciphers.
Firewalls and Virtual Private Networks (Dr Charles Watson)
Firewalls provide services including network address translation (NAT), virtual private networks (VPN), and filtering of traffic outside the network security policy. Firewalls fill an increasing role in network security these days. This project investigates the provision of web security and the development of VPNs. A current Masters project (by Mingli Lu) involves the implementation of a Virtual Private Network when access control moves from being IP based to role based.
Contact:
Professor A. S. M. Sajeev
Chair of Information Technology/Computer Science
University of New England
Phone: 02 6773 2285
Email: sajeev@une.edu.au