Invited Speaker Seminar: Sharing Threat Intelligence to Mitigate Cyber Attacks

Ali E. Abdallah,
Professor of Information Security

Friday, July 18, 2014 at 11:00 a.m.
Room EV003.309

Abstract

Being exposed to increasingly sophisticated persistent threats, organizations will be better able to defend themselves against cyber attacks through effective sharing of threat intelligence. This decreases the adversary's likelihood of success with each subsequent cyber attack attempt. The telecommunication sector has been sharing information to track down and mitigate threats such as DDoS, mail abuse and spread of malware for many years. Financial organizations in US also share threat information through the Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (ISAC). In some cases, the sharing is ad-hoc through phones, emails or portals and in other cases specific data formats and protocols are used to enable the exchanges. This talk highlights the benefits of sharing threat intelligence, discusses the needs to develop an eco system to enable this effectively and identifies issues that need further research. It also reports on the initial progress made by a catalyst collaborative project on “Sharing Threat Intelligence to Mitigate Cyber Attacks” involving AT & T, DSTL, RSA, Cybersquared, EMC, and Birmingham City University.

Biography

Ali E. Abdallah is a professor of information security and head of "Computer Science & Informatics" research at Birmingham City University. Prior to current appointment, he was a professor of Information Assurance and head of e-security research centre at London South Bank University, a visiting professor at Royal Holloway University of London, a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Reading and a research officer at Oxford University Computing Laboratory. He lectures in information security, information risk management, software security, distributed systems and formal methods. His research interests are closely linked to his teaching and strongly emphasize the relevant theoretical underpinnings. He leads the “Centre for Cyber Security” research at BCU focusing on topics ranging from identity management, access control and privacy to threat modelling, securing infrastructures, shared information in virtual organizations and the development of high assurance secure and resilient software.