Centre for Secure Information Technologies - Tranche 2 Proposal

互联网(网络空间)是无限知识的源泉，是不受国界、法律、法规或语言限制的不断发展的艺术品，是一个具有商业、政治和犯罪利益的社区。互联网有20亿互联网用户，2.34亿个网站，每天发送2500亿封电子邮件。很难说互联网将成为什么样子，但我们可以看到一个互联网将被用于辅助生活的世界，允许计算机驾驶我们的汽车，监测和管理我们的健康。几乎可以肯定的是，互联网也将成为我们的私人助理；计划我们的一天，建议我们什么时候应该吃饭，什么时候应该睡觉，我们应该做什么。我们可以肯定的是，互联网的复杂性和能力继续呈指数级爆炸式增长，安全也是如此；信息、基础设施和公民将需要同样先进和智能的能力。即使互联网是一个正常运行的社会的核心，网络空间也没有得到保护，网络威胁已经演变为全球犯罪企业。2011年2月，英国内阁办公室宣布，网络犯罪每年给英国造成270亿英镑的损失。与互联网相关的风险从个人延伸到国家。未受保护的PC在连接到互联网后几分钟内就会被恶意软件(恶意软件)感染，去年对伊朗发电厂的Stuxnet病毒攻击表明，互联网正被民族国家用于网络战。然而，互联网安全目前要么是那些愿意为安全工具和服务付费的人的特权，要么是那些拥有工程技能的人了解技术和威胁的特权。应该做些什么呢？CSIT的这项研究的愿景是，互联网安全应该为所有人提供。当信息在网络中传输时，应该清除和过滤恶意软件，并对犯罪活动进行监管。一个类比就是将水作为一种公用事业来提供。我们相信，当我们打开水龙头时，我们喝的水是安全和纯净的，我们在水龙头上没有过滤器。当我们在家里打开互联网时，我们也应该相信，提供互联网的机制本身就净化了内容。CSIT的核心是确保当前和未来的所有IT解决方案的安全性，这是一个长期的挑战。CSIT正在成为一个世界级的研究和创新中心，将安全信息技术的重大研究突破与创新和商业化的令人兴奋的发展结合在一起。当电子传感器设备和闭路电视摄像机联网并与计算机处理相结合时，IT将成为物理基础设施保护领域的强大工具，包括火灾监控、资产跟踪和入侵检测。因此，虽然IT安全本身通常是针对病毒程序的自动攻击进行防御的问题，但IT资产保护是帮助操作员的工具。用于基础设施系统的IT系统本身必须是安全的，尤其是因为个人生物识别数据正越来越多地作为解决方案的一部分推出。CSIT的主要目标是从战略上将英国行业定位在安全IT领域的前沿，因为该领域是一个关键、新兴和快速增长的行业，对社会安全和保障具有更广泛的好处。CSIT隶属于皇后大学，拥有非常成功的产业合作和衍生公司组建记录，因此，CSIT非常适合建立强大的商业和学术合作伙伴关系，创造持续的知识转移机会，为研究转移提供可实现的短期里程碑，再加上重大突破的令人兴奋的机会，确保英国工业的商业机会。

The Internet (Cyber space) is a source of infinite knowledge, an evolving artefact unconstrained by national borders, law, regulations or languages and a community with commercial, political and criminal interests. The Internet has 2 billion Internet users, there are 234 million web sites and there are 250 billion emails sent every day.It is hard to say exactly what the internet will become, but we can see a world where the Internet will be used in assisted living; allowing computers to drive our cars and monitoring and managing our health. The Internet will almost certainly also become a personal assistant; scheduling our day, advising us when we should eat, when we should sleep and what we should do. One thing we can be sure of is that the complexity and capability of the Internet continues to explode exponentially and as it does securing; information, infrastructure and citizen will need equally advanced and intelligent capability.Even though the Internet is core to a functioning society, Cyber space is not protected and cyber threats have evolved into global criminal enterprises. In February 2011 the UK Cabinet Office announced that cybercrime cost the UK £27Billion per annum. The risks associated with the Internet extend from individuals to nations. An unprotected PC can be infected by malicious software (malware) within minutes of being connected to the Internet, and last year the Stuxnet virus attack on an Iranian power plant showed that the Internet is being used by nation states for Cyber war. Internet Security is currently however either a privilege for those who are willing to pay for security tools and services, or for those with the engineering skills to understand the technology and threat. What should be done?The research at CSIT has a vision that Internet Security should be available for all. As information is travelling through the network, it should be cleansed and filtered of malware, and criminal activity policed. An analogy would lie with the provision of water as a utility. We trust that when we turn on a tap, the water we drink is safe and pure, we do not have filters at the tap. As we turn on the Internet in our homes we should also be confident that the mechanism to deliver the Internet in itself cleanses the content. At the heart of CSIT is the perennial challenge of making all of the IT solutions, of today and tomorrow, secure. CSIT is becoming a world-class Research and Innovation centre, coupling major research breakthroughs in Secure Information Technology with exciting developments in innovation and commercialisation.When electronic sensor devices and CCTV cameras are networked and combined with computer processing, IT then becomes a power enabling tool in the field of physical infrastructure protection, which includes fire monitoring, asset tracking and intrusion detection. Thus while IT security itself is often a matter of defending against automated attack by viral programs, IT for asset protection is a tool to assist the human operator. The IT systems used for infrastructure systems must themselves be secure not least because personal biometric data is increasingly being rolled out as a part of the solution.The driving goal for CSIT is to strategically position U.K. industry at the forefront of the field of secure IT because this field is a critical, emerging and rapidly growing sector with its wider benefits for the safety and security of society. Embedded within Queen's University, with its very successful record of industrial collaboration and spin-out company formation, CSIT therefore lends itself well to a strong business and academic partnership, creating a continuous flow of knowledge transfer opportunities, with realizable shorter term milestones for transfer of the research, coupled with exciting opportunities for major breakthroughs and ensuring commercial opportunities for UK industry.