Cyber security centre opens in Belfast

The centre will pioneer the concept of converged security in which IT systems are used to improve people’s physical security, while protecting the systems themselves to ensure they cannot be hacked into.

John McCanny, Principal Investigator at the centre, said, “Our starting points are mission-driven projects for which we have identified end goals. CSIT also has a strong entrepreneurial ethos. We’re confident that we’ll be able to fast-track the development of marketable applications of our technologies.”

The Centre for Secure Information Technologies is an early example of the Innovation and Knowledge Centres.

Projects at the centre will include the development of ultra-powerful processors will make Internet surfing much safer by analysing Internet traffic in real time, enabling threatening behaviour to be identified and stopped immediately. This technology could be used to foil cyber-crime and protecting Internet users from paedophiles, harassment and other online threats.

The key to this capability will be the capacity of the new processor to analyse data between 100 and 10,000 times as fast as existing hardware and software-based content-processing solutions.

“Because conventional processor technology can only deal with information character by character, it’s far too slow to analyse Internet traffic in real time,” says project leader Sakir Sezer. “We’re developing parallel processors which can be scaled to process up to 32 characters at once, making real-time inspection of huge data volumes possible for the first time ever. Network providers will be able to install and use this technology to provide much better protection for Internet users, as well as [improving] user experience, that is, the quality of service), and efficient utilisation/management of network resources.”

Another project will develop systems for the intelligent analysis of closed-circuit television (CCTV) pictures to cut crime on public transport by recognises suspicious behaviour in live Internet-enabled CCTV feeds from buses and trains, thus allowing control room staff to intervene and prevent assaults, thefts and other incidents.

Initially designed for use on-board buses, the purpose of the system is to automatically analyse video and audio information captured by every camera/sensor in a CCTV network and instantly relay the feeds it judges most suspicious or threatening to four screens in the control room.

“Our system will prioritise feeds but still ensure it’s the controller who makes the decisions as to what action to take.” says research director Paul Miller. “The system will instantly give every live feed a score, based on factors such as time of day, crime statistics for the location, a threat assessment of the people shown and so on. This score will determine where each feed is placed in the queue for the controller’s attention.”