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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: EP/K005790/1
Title: Games and Abstraction: The Science of Cyber Security
Principal Investigator: Hankin, Professor C
Other Investigators:
Hoehn, Professor T
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department: Institute for Security Science and Tech
Organisation: Imperial College London
Scheme: Standard Research
Starts: 01 January 2013 Ends: 30 June 2016 Value (£): 493,333
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Fundamentals of Computing Management & Business Studies
Mathematical Aspects of OR
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
Aerospace, Defence and Marine Information Technologies
Related Grants:
EP/K005820/1 EP/K006010/1
Panel History:
Panel DatePanel NameOutcome
15 Jun 2012 Cyber Research Institute Announced
Summary on Grant Application Form
This proposal addresses the challenge "How do we make better security decisions?". Specifically we propose to develop new approaches to decision support based on mathematical game theory. Our work will support professionals who are designing secure systems and also those charged with determining if systems have an appropriate level of security -- in particular, systems administrators. We will develop techniques to support human decision making and techniques which enable well-founded security design decisions to be made.

We recognise that the emerging trend away from corporate IT systems towards a Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) culture will bring new challenges and changes to the role of systems administrator. However, even in this brave new world, companies will continue to have core assets such as the network infrastructure and the corporate database which will need the same kind of protection. It is certainly to be expected that some of the attacks will now originate from inside the corporate

firewall rather than from outside. Our team will include researchers from the Imperial College Business School who will help us to ensure that our models are properly reflecting these new threats.

Whilst others have used game theoretic approaches to answer these questions, much of the previous work has been more or less ad hoc. As such the resulting

security decisions may be based on unsound principles. In particular, it is common to use abstractions without giving much consideration to the relationship between properties of the abstract model and the real system. We will develop a new game theoretic framework which enables a precise analysis of these relationships and hence provides a more robust decision support tool.
Key Findings
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Summary
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Further Information:  
Organisation Website: http://www.imperial.ac.uk