Our research

1. Build data and information sharing platforms enabling privacy-preserving data sharing and trustworthy cyber defence collaboration.
2. Design and construct resilient and reliable software systems to enable defence mechanisms in distributed and potentially hostile environments.
3. Design and build usable and human-centric security technologies to change humans from the weakest link of the chain into the first line of active defence.
4. Quantify and understand threats and cyber risks including socio-economics and financial risks.
5. Design policies, governance and decision-making platforms to investigate regulation-compliance and facilitate cyber security mechanisms embedding within organisations.

Centre for Elite Performance, Expertise and Training (CEPET)

A key strength of CEPET is its multi-disciplinary team and approach to issues surrounding the acquisition, maintenance and loss of expertise.

Learn more about CEPET's projects.

Programming Languages and Verification (PLV) Group

PLV conducts research in all aspects of modern programming languages and systems.

Our interests encompass:

• programming language theory, design and implementation
• tools and environments for programming languages
• program specification and verification.

Learn more about PLV's research.

The Information Security and Privacy (ISP) Group

Almost every organisation in our digital economy now relies on data in one way or another.

To secure data transmission and ensure private processing across the entire data lifecycle, the ISP Group at Macquarie University aims to build on expertise in:

• systems and protocols
• information theory
• applied cryptography and cryptanalysis
• machine learning
• data mining.

Learn more about the ISP's research.

Cyber Strategy, Foresight and Policy

Investigators: Dr Bates Gill, Head of the Department of Security Studies and Criminology, directs this program, with research projects led by Dr Allon Uhlmann.

Description: This program looks into the causes and motivations of international cyber-terrorists, international cybercrime, and strategies for cyber deception. It also includes research on Financial Fraud detection. The program leverages the investment and development by Macquarie University of a Cyber Intelligence Lab.

Data Security and Privacy

Investigators: Directed by Professor Dali Kaafar, this program includes two projects led by Dr Muhammad Ikram and Dr Hassan Asghar in the Department of Computing.

Description: Dr Asghar’s work is centred around building privacy-preserving systems for data sharing and enabling trustworthy machine learning with applications for Health Datasets combining expertise from three different faculties.

Human-Centric Security

Investigator: Directed by Associate Professor Shlomo Berkovsky of the Australian Institute of Health Innovation.

Description: Associate Professor Berkovsky and Dr Piers Bayl-Smith are leading two research projects, focusing on issues around the behaviour of human users and their interaction with cybersecurity technologies, with a particular focus on models for incident investigation and security of health data and applications.

Legal & Ethics of Cyber

Investigators: Directed by Professor Niloufer Selvadurai, who is leading research along with Dr Doron Goldbarsht.

Description: This interdisciplinary program integrates legal, technical and business perspectives to address critical digital governance issues.

The team are looking at issues including:

• how systems and networks can be designed to better support data privacy and data security and prevent cybercrime
• potential law reforms governing the use of artificial intelligence
• improvement to telecommunications laws in respect to industry and customer interests
• liability of telecommunications carriers and carriage service providers in respect to harmful third-party content
• the role of new payment products and services (NPPSs) in the mobile industry, including potential anti-money laundering (AML) risks.

Risk Management, Governance & Control

Investigators: Professor Elizabeth Sheedy in the Department of Finance is directing three projects led by Professor Norma Harrison, Dr Stephanie Huang and Professor Pavel Shevchenko, and bringing together researchers from both the Macquarie Business School and Faculty of Science and Engineering.

Description: An acclaimed risk-management expert, Professor Sheedy tackles the huge challenges of managing cyber-risk for both organisations and consumers. Complex supply chains mean that cyber-risks in one firm can flow through to others, like a virus. This program is investigating risk management solutions including ways that consumers can make better and smarter purchasing decisions in the online marketplace and avoid cyber-fraud.

Software and Cyber Physical Systems Security

Investigators: Professor Dali Kaafar is directing research on Software Systems Security. A particular illustration of the research and development activities in the SCPSS program is the partnership with the Australian company Ditno with research on AI-driven network segmentation.

Description: The team, led by Dr Muhammad Ikram from the Department of Computing, is using data-driven analysis to develop machine-learning-based algorithms aiming at improving privacy and security across web and mobile systems, as well as detecting security non-compliances in enterprise networks.