Software Engineering and Information Security
The Software Engineering and Information Security group has a number of research themes including:
- Usable Security: Research into making security products usable, helping people to protect themselves from computer crime, innovative alternative authentication mechanisms
- Contingency planning for software security: this aims to increase the resilience of computational infrastructures to adverse events including cybersecurity threats, major bugs and blackouts.
- Software engineering for space based systems: this work develops new architectures and design techniques for space related software including human space flight and satellite based location services.
- Safety-critical software engineering: this work analyses the causes of failure in complex software systems ranging from aviation through to healthcare and alternative energy applications.
- Computer Forensics: examines the recovery and analysis of any type of digital data from any type of digital media so that it will stand up in a court of law. This includes examining dependability of forensic software, the effectiveness of extraction techniques in both pervasive and traditional technologies.
- Dependable social technical systems: Using modelling and simulation of socio-technical systems to improve dependability and predict potential failures
Academic Staff: Prof Chris Johnson, Dr Ronald R Poet, Dr Karen V Renaud, Dr Tim Storer, Prof David A Watt.
Research Assistants and Research Students: Mr Muhammad Imran Abbasi, Mr Hani Aljahdali, Mr Md Sadek Ferdous, Mrs Huda Al-Shuaily, Mrs Heather Crawford, Miss Rosanne English, Ms Wendy Goucher, Mr George Grispos, Mr Salem Jebriel, Mr Joe Maguire, Mr Jan Muhammad, Mr Stefan Raue, Mr Yulun Song.
- usable security
- alternative authentication
- information security management
- cyber-security
- digital forensics
- dependable heterogeneous software infrastructures
- dependable software based systems
- biometrics, computational trust
- software engineering for science
- steganography
- security of space based infrastructures
- contingency planning for software security
Password cueing with cue(ink)blots
Renaud, K.V.
A comprehensive study of the usability of multiple graphical passwords
Chowdhury, S., Poet, R.
The affect of familiarity on the usability of recognition-based graphical password
Aljahdali, H., and Poet, R.
Portable personal identity provider in mobile phones
Ferdous, M.S., and Poet, R.
Exploring the guessability of image passwords using verbal descriptions
Chowdhury, S., Poet, R.
Dynamic identity federation using security assertion markup language (SAML)
Ferdous, M.S., and Poet, R.
Multicriteria optimization to select images as passwords in recognition based graphical authentication systems
Chowdhury, S., Poet, R.
A framework for continuous, transparent mobile device authentication
Crawford, H., Renaud, K.
Encouraging second thoughts: obstructive user interfaces for raising security awareness
Storer, T.
Investigating information security risks of mobile device use within organizations
Glisson, W.B.
Information technology: gateway to direct democracy in China and the world
Cockshott, W.P.
Guidelines for designing graphical authentication mechanism interfaces
Renaud, K.
In a world of their own: working on the move
Goucher, W., and Renaud, K.
Using insights from email users to inform organisational email management policy
Ramsay, J., and Renaud, K.
Accessible and secure? Design constraints on image and sound based passwords
Gibson, M., Conrad, M., Maple, C., and Renaud, K.
Distance education as enabler in crossing the digital divide: will the phoenix fly?
Van Biljon, J., and Renaud, K.
Web authentication using Mikon images
Renaud, K.
Musipass: authenticating me softly with "my" song
Gibson, M., Renaud, K.
Armchair authentication
Renaud, K.
Predicting technology acceptance and adoption by the elderly: a qualitative study
Renaud, K.
This Week’s EventsAll Upcoming EventsPast Events
This Week’s Events
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Upcoming Events
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Past Events
Who is old - and why should we care? (29 January, 2013)
Speaker: Dr Alistair Edwards
Multicriteria Optimization Approach to Select Images as Passwords in Recognition Based Graphical Authentication Systems (05 February, 2013)
Speaker: Soumyadeb Chowdhury
Recognition-based graphical authentication systems (RGBSs) use images as passwords. The major goal of our research is to investigate the usability and guessability i.e. vulnerability of the different image types, Mikon, doodle, art and object (sports, food, sculptures etc) to written and verbal descriptions, when used as passwords in RBGS. We conducted two longitudinal user studies over a period of 4 months to evaluate the usability (100 users) and guessability based on verbal descriptions (70 users), of these image types when used as passwords in RGBSs. After deriving conclusions based on a statistical analysis of the data, the research question was “How to rank image types based on both the criteria”. Usability and guessability are in conflict, when assessing the suitability of an image for use as a password. Since the statistical analysis alone does not unambiguously identify the most suitable image to be used as password, here, we present a new approach which effectively integrates a series of techniques to rank images, taking into account the conflicting criteria.
Information processing in emergency management environments (12 February, 2013)
Speaker: Stefan Raue
In this talk I will discuss some of my work on information processing in emergency management environments. In particular, I will focus on crowdsourcing techniques to improve the response to adverse events resulting from natural or man-made hazards. I will talk about the information needs of emergency services during the early stages of response, and discuss the information processing activities to which crowdsourcing activities could be beneficial. There are multiple technical, social and ethical challenges arising from the prospect of involving the crowd in large-scale information processing tasks in this time- and safety-critical environment.
The Black Hole Methodology (19 February, 2013)
Speaker: Wendy Goucher
Why am I not running the world? (26 February, 2013)
Speaker: Dave McKay
Inspired by Suranga Chandratillake’s Turing lecture, I want to develop his theme of the “The Boffin Phallacy”. Using wild assertions and examples from my own career, and with no humility whatsoever, I will point out some things that Suranga missed. I will put aside fears of losing my academic friends and alienating academic researchers everywhere, and try to show that a business life is exciting and sexy. Along the way, I hope to suggest some ways that we can turn out computing graduates who will one day run the globe.
Further Adventures with the Raspberry Pi Cloud (05 March, 2013)
Speaker: David White, Jeremy Singer (and L4 project student)
With money from GU Chancellor's Fund, we have been constructing a scale model of a cloud datacenter out of Raspberry Pi boards. In this presentation, we will give details of the aims of the project, potential deployment in research and teaching contexts, and progress to date.
Proactive Social Media Use of Emergency Authorities (19 March, 2013)
Speaker: Preben Bonnen & Martin Marcher
In the summer of 2012, the Danish Forum for Civil Protection and Emergency Planning / Forum for Samfundets Beredskab (FSB), started a large project focusing on the authorities' proactive use of social media, primarily Facebook and Twitter. The inspiration came from the Norwegian and Swedish police, who not only proactively use Facebook and Twitter, but they have also previously made thorough considerations regarding the possibilities and prospects for the use of social media.
The rationale behind the launch of an analysis, and later that year a seminar the 2nd of November 2012 in the Danish Parliament, were the growing challenges authorities are facing in relation to both the media and the press, and in relation to social media. In all cases there is an expectation of quick information, and even so more, in the possible event of a major incident where questions and the need for information would multiply. But when questions are many, the information from the authorities is typically and usually moderate. That may change with proactive use of social media.
Basically, there isn’t much that can prevent authorities using social media in ensuring society preparedness. For example, the police force can use social media tools to convey important information to the public, create campaigns targeting specific social segments, communicate enquiries regarding criminals or missing persons, and issue traffic warnings. Besides reaching their target audience, who may not usually be involved in dialogue with police, there is a good possibility of increasing dialogue with the general public. This can be achieved through chats with the public on various issues chosen by citizens themselves, on issues they find relevant within their own society. In conclusion, police presence on social media over time will be expected as a normal part of their everyday job. Preben Bonnén and Martin Marcher from Forum for Civil Protection and Emergency Planning (FSB) will present a detailed presentation discussing the opportunities and perspectives that present themselves to authorities in society preparedness, and to what extent they do so.
Engineering Adaptive Software Systems (19 March, 2013)
Speaker: Dr Arosha Bandara
Adaptive software systems have been the focus of significant research activity due to their promise of addressing some of the complexity challenges associated with large software intensive systems. In 2003, Kephart and Chess published their vision of autonomic computing, which aimed to address some of the challenges of software complexity. In essence, they proposed that software architectures should incorporate a layer, analogous to the autonomic nervous system, that could adapt the behaviour of the system to meet particular quality attributes (e.g., security, usability, etc.). The challenges of engineering such systems encompass a range of computing disciplines, that include requirements engineering, software architectures and usability. This talk will explore these challenges, drawing on work being done at The Open University in the areas of adaptive user interfaces, information security and privacy.