Information Assurance and Secure Systems

Over the past 6 years, Newcastle University has developed a significant international profile in the area of information security. Groundbreaking work has been done on, for example, verifiable voting schemes and usable security. The Prt Voter approach to verifiable elections, devised by Peter Ryan, is widely regarded as one of the leading such schemes (the scheme won the best design award at the recent International Voting Competition, VoComp.org). Dr Jeff Yan 's graphical passwords have been widely acclaimed as a promising approach to making passwords both secure and memorable. Besides work in cryptography and cryptographic protocols, the group specializes in the socio-technical aspects of security and in cross-fertilisation between security and fault-tolerence.

Newcastle has led a number of major security/dependability projects: DIRC, MAFTIA, DSoS, Cabernet and GOLD. Recently started projects include Usable Security for the Grid, Quantum Computation and the Information Assurance and the Quantum Computation Network of Excellence Q-Net. Newcastle also has links to Opt2vote, one of the key suppliers of voting technology in the UK.

Areas of Newcastle expertise include:

  • Cryptography
  • Cryptographic protocols
  • Mathematical foundations (information flow, opacity etc)
  • Security policies
  • Verifiable voting schemes
  • Quantum cryptography and information assurance
  • Analysis tools (model-checkers et)
  • Usable security
  • Socio-technical aspects of security
  • Block ciphers
  • Side-channel analysis
  • Secure e-commerce
  • Secure virtual environments and dynamic coalitions

The theme's academic members: