Research Associate on Securing Convergent Ultra-large Scale Infrastructures

The Department of Computer Science is looking to employ a Postdoctoral Researcher to work within an interdisciplinary team on securing convergent ultra-large scale infrastructures (SCULI). The SCULI project is a research collaboration between University of Oxford, University of Bristol and the University of Lancaster that will be working closely with stakeholders and organisations from industry and the critical national infrastructure sectors. The project is investigating how to secure emerging ultra-large scale digital infrastructures which are seeing convergence and connectivity at unprecedented scale. This is true for both current critical national infrastructures and emerging future systems, e.g., smart cities, intelligent transportation, high-value manufacturing and Industry 4.0. Cybersecurity of such ultra-large scale infrastructures faces unprecedented complexity. Diverse legacy and non-legacy software and hardware compose on-the-fly to deliver services to millions of users with varying requirements and unpredictable actions. This complexity is compounded by intricate supply-chains and the need to deliver resilient operations in the presence of untrusted, partially trusted or compromised elements. The successful candidate will be required to work primarily under the direction of Professor Ivan Flechais, with guidance from other senior academics and will be based in the Oxford team focused on the following research objectives:

• Predictability at ultra-large scale: How to elicit, specify and validate security assurances for service composition in the presence of uncertainty, dynamism and human behaviour (including addressing direct and indirect dependencies and resulting systemic risks)?
It is essential that successful candidate would hold a relevant PhD/DPhil or being close to completion in computer science or information systems. In addition, the successful candidate will be expected to collaborate with researchers working across the SCULI project, and cybersecurity professionals from business and industry.