RESEARCH CHAIRS

Chair holder: Mourad Debbabi

Modern power generation and distribution together with the increasing demand for energy are driving the deployment of “smart” grids to operate, control and monitor electrical grids. Smart grids leverage IT capabilities to offer distributed automation, metering and controls, which can enhance consumer-based interaction and interoperability. This entails the ability to guarantee both the security and privacy of Smart grids, since electrical grids are a key critical infrastructure component. Recent cyber security incidents demonstrate the debilitating and disrupting effect of cyber-attacks in terms of their impact on security, safety and economic activity. This research program aims to explore the security of the smart grid domains, components, devices and protocols in order to elicit the security requirements of smart grid and to identify the attack surfaces, together with the underlying vulnerabilities, threats and their consequences. It also aims to propose practical and efficient detection, prevention, mitigation and recovery techniques and methodologies to “harden” the overall smart grid security.

Chair holder: Lingyu Wang

Chair Program: Industrial Research Chairs program

This chair program aims at developing a series of solutions to improve the security of cloud and edge computing virtual infrastructures based on network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN), with special application to virtual radio access network (vRAN). The program is expected to produce new research models, methodologies and results that would advance the state of the art by tackling key challenges in four aspects of the security solutions: efficiency (e.g., how to perform continuous security verification for large and dynamic virtual infrastructures in near real time), accuracy (e.g., how to quantify the co-residency threats), automation (e.g., how to automatically identify critical events leading to compliance violations) and privacy (e.g., how to protect tenants’ virtual network topologies from third party auditors). Other benefits include best practices and recommendations that could be adopted and deployed by the industry to improve the overall security of telecommunication networks.

Chair holder: Jeremy Clark

This chair program involves different themes, which include an analysis of blockchain-based financial products with a deep understanding of the implications for the security and integrity of the products  use-cases; an analysis of auditing process for firms that hold assets or liabilities transacted on blockchains; an analysis of blockchain suitability for enhancing voting systems to provide end-to-end verifiability as well as non-financial Blockchain use cases with important roles in identity management, public key infrastructure, and timestamping. The program aims at investigating the security and functionality of financial technologies deployed on blockchain with an emphasis on real world use cases and compatibility with existing financial technologies. Alongside, it aims at elaborating pilot studies, proof of concept designs, and potential real deployment facilitated by the industrial partner (Catallaxy/RCGT).