Cyber Security Research Group (CSRG)

Research Area Leader	Research Area Deputy Leader
Associate Professor Rafiqul Islam	Dr Arash Mahboubi

Research Area Leader

Research Area Deputy Leader

Professor Rafiqul Islam

Dr Arash Mahboubi

Overview

The Cyber Security Research Group (CSRG), housed within the School of Computing and Mathematics, conducts innovative, relevant and ground-breaking research across a wide spectrum of cyber security areas, including Computer Network Security, Security of Wireless and Body Sensor Networks, Data Protection in Social Networks, Privacy Preserving Data Sharing, Vulnerability Assessment, Malware Analysis, Security Threats in Cloud Computing, Security of Internet of Things (IoT), and Digital Forensics.

The CSRG contributes to Australia’s Cyber Security Strategy and is one of the research participants in the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre (CSCRC) and leads the “Privacy Preserving Data Sharing in a Hyperconnected World” research theme. The members of the CSRG also contribute to the NSW Cyber Security Innovation Node which is part of the Australian Cyber Security Growth Network (AustCyber) and the NSW Government.

The CSRG vision is to produce high quality and impactful research output and make a significant contribution to Australia’s readiness and response to Cyber Security threats.

The CSRG mission is to perform innovative, relevant and useful research that solves the Cyber security problems that arise as a result of the advancements in ICT by utilising latest research methods and technologies.

The CSRG goals include:

conduct impactful cyber security research and build linkages with individuals, government organisations, and industry partners
develop collaborations with cyber security researchers from other cyber security research providers and industry organisations to combat cyber threats at national level
contribute to achieving world level ranking in Excellence of Research in Australia (ERA) in cyber security field of research
contribute to developing research projects that generate outcomes to help our regional communities to protect their information assets

Members

Name	Title/Position	Research Interests	Location
Irfan Altas	Head of School and Associate Professor		Wagga Wagga
Yeslam Al-Saggaf	Associate Professor in Information Technology	Cross device tracking and security of databases in mobile apps	Wagga Wagga
Tanveer Zia	Adjunct Professor in Computing	Security, privacy, and trust in the Internet of Things; Mobile communication and wireless networks security; Cyber risk management and cyber security policy; Access control and authentication	Wagga Wagga
Oliver Burmeister	Professor in Information Systems and Senior Research Fellow	Ethics; human factors	Wagga Wagga
Manoranjan Paul	Professor in Computer Science		Bathurst
Zahid Islam	Professor in Computer Science	Privacy Preserving Data Mining, Privacy Preserving Data Publishing, Privacy Preserving Data Sharing, Application of Machine Learning for Cyber Security	Bathurst
Lihong Zheng	Professor in Computing	Artificial intelligence, Network security, Wireless sensor network, and Internet of Things	Wagga Wagga
Azizur Rahman	Associate Professor in Mathematics and Statistics		Wagga Wagga
Arif Khan	Sub Dean (Graduate Studies) / Senior Lecturer in Computing	Cyber Security in Next Generation Wireless Networks	Wagga Wagga
Rafiqul Islam	Associate Professor in Computing	Cybersecurity with a specific focus on malware analysis and classification, authentication, security in the cloud, social media, Internet of Things (IoT) and the Dark web security.	Albury
Quazi Mamun	Senior Lecturer in Computing		Wagga Wagga
Maumita Bhattacharya	Senior Lecturer in Information Technology	Artificial Intelligence (AI) for robust and resilient cybersecurity systems; Electronic Fraud (eFraud) & Threats; Cybersecurity Management & Governance; Human Dimensions of Cybersecurity	Albury
Peter White	Adjunct Lecturer	Digital identity management, federated identity, zero-trust operations in networks, cloud environments and federation, enterprise risk management in a cloud environment	Bathurst
Ken Eustace	Adjunct Lecturer in Information Technology	Human Factors, Machine Learning, Fake News and False Information, Ethics, Multidisciplinary Cyber Security Responses and Responsibilities.	Wagga Wagga
Sabih Rehman	Senior Lecturer in Computing	Internet of Things (IoT) Security, Vehicular communication security, Physical layer security	Wagga Wagga
Ashad Kabir	Associate Professor in Computer Science	User-centric Privacy, Blockchain, Context-aware Access Control	Bathurst
Arash Mahboubi	Lecturer in Computing	Computer/mobile malware, ransomware, malware analysis, modelling, malware epidemic and attack mining	Port Macquarie
Michael Bewong	Senior Lecturer in Computing	Privacy preserving data sharing; Platforms and architecture for cybersecurity	Wagga Wagga
Rashid Khokhar	Lecturer in Computing	Mobile communication and wireless networks security; Machine learning security; Privacy preserving data sharing; Platforms and architecture for cybersecurity.	Wagga Wagga
Gea Rahman	Lecturer in Computing (Data Science)	Application of Machine Learning for Cyber Security	Port Macquarie
Mostafa Dahshan	Lecturer in Computing	Network Security, Cloud Security, IoT Security	Bathurst
Yinhao Jiang	Cyber Security CRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow		Wagga Wagga
Ba Dung Le	Cyber Security CRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow		Wagga Wagga

Projects

Current Projects

Project Name	Brief Description	Funding Body	Investigators
Girls in Cyber Security Advancing (GiCSA)	This project aimed at high school girls to introduce them to the world of cyber security as a career path and make them conscious about the cyber threats in a day to day life.	Australian Government Department of Industry, Innovation and Science	Tanveer Zia

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Past Projects

Project Name	Brief Description	Funding Body	Investigators
The threats to privacy from data mining	The aim of this study is to explore the potential of data mining as a technique that could be used by malicious data miners to threaten the privacy of SNS users.	CSU Faculty of Business, Justice and Behavioural Sciences Compact funding	Yeslam Al-Saggaf and Zahid Islam
An analytical study of IT Security Governance (ITSG) in Australian organisations from international perspectives	This study will advance the IT security processes in Australian organisations and compare it with international standards and guidelines for ITSG.	CSU Faculty of Business, Justice and Behavioural Sciences Compact funding	Tanveer Zia and Maumita Bhattacharya
Computational intelligence for anomaly detection in networks: an investigation	In this research we shall review the existing computational intelligence (CI) - based anomaly detection methods for network intrusion detection. Next, comparative performance of anomaly detection approaches was investigated as against signature-based and misuse detection methods.	CSU Faculty of Business, Justice and Behavioural Sciences Compact funding	Maumita Bhattacharya and Tanveer Zia
The digital divide in Asia	A project that looked at the digital divides in Yemen, Pakistan, China and Bangladesh.	n/a	Yeslam Al-Saggaf, Tanveer Zia, Zahid Islam and Lihong Zheng
Information security in IT service management	A study conducted to gauge the level of information security adoption in IT Service Management.	CSU Small Grant	Tanveer Zia
Reputation and Trust Management in wireless sensor networks	A study of trust in wireless sensor networks based on communal reputation and individual trust (CRIT) in sensor nodes.	FoB Seed Grant	Tanveer Zia and Zahid Islam
A concurrent hybrid approach to secure computer systems	This project investigated concurrent application of AI and visualisation techniques for network security.	CSU Competitive Grant	Maumita Bhattacharya and Xiaodi Huang

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Research Students

Name	Award
Mozammel Chowdhury	PhD
Mark Duffy	PhD
Syed Usman Jamil	PhD
Muhammad Rana	PhD
Khondker Jahid Reza	PhD
Ron Bester	DIT
Jamil Ispahany	DIT
Peter Padiet	DIT
Andrew Groome	Honours
Javeriah Saleem	Honours

PhD/DBA Topics

The following opportunities exist in Internet Security:

Supervisor	Topic
Associate Professor Yeslam Al-Saggaf yalsaggaf@csu.edu.au 02 6933 2593	Data protection in social network sites
Professor Zahid Islam zislam@csu.edu.au 02 6933 2415	Privacy preserving data mining Privacy preserving trust models for business to business communication
Adjunct Professor Tanveer Zia tzia@csu.edu.au	Redefining information security metrics to increase the maturity level of security processes Designing deployable information security standards Security issues in an increasingly interconnected world of large-scale IT infrastructures Closing the gap between users' mental model of the information security system and the reality of the system Data breach prevention strategies for smart devices Setting the compliance standards in cloud security Designing a simulative architecture for penetration testing Study of procedures for testing the robustness of exploits and their ability to bypass the detection systems A balance between accessibility of information and its costs to privacy
Maumita Bhattacharya mbhattacharya@csu.edu.au 02 6051 9619	Computational intelligence for network security
Professor Lihong Zheng lzheng@csu.edu.au 02 6933 2387	Securing the cloud

Honours

Supervisor	Topic
Associate Professor Yeslam Al-Saggaf yalsaggaf@csu.edu.au 02 6933 2593 Wagga Wagga Discipline: Computing & Mathematics.	Threats to personal information in social networks sites Invading privacy at country level: the case of Google
Professor Lihong Zheng lzheng@csu.edu.au 02 6933 2387 Wagga Wagga Discipline: Computing & Mathematics.	Securing the cloud
Professor Zahid Islam zislam@csu.edu.au 02 69332415 Bathurst Discipline: Computing & Mathematics.	Business-to-business collaboration while hiding sensitive information
Adjunct Professor Tanveer Zia tzia@csu.edu.au Wagga Wagga Discipline: Computing & Mathematics	Vulnerability patching in smart phones
Maumita Bhattacharya mbhattacharya@csu.edu.au 02 6051 9619 Albury-Wodonga Discipline: Computing & Mathematics.	Biologically inspired computation for anomaly detection