Working with industrial partners Airbus, Raytheon and Thales, security experts at Lancaster University are working on a project that will enable business leaders to take more-informed decisions about protecting critical infrastructure from cyber attack.
The MUMBA project is specifically focused on threats to the control systems in charge of key infrastructure at manufacturing plants, power stations, electricity grids and transport networks. These are increasingly connected to the Internet, which makes them more vulnerable to cyber attack.
Professor Awais Rashid says: “This research is about understanding the cyber security risks at the intersection of people and technology. If you give people lots of technical metrics that they don’t understand, you get poor decision-making.
"Risk decisions are made not only at board and management level but also by those working with industrial control systems on a day-to-day basis. Our project will produce a software tool that will allow professionals to more effectively understand and visualise risks to these systems.”
The project will also study the implications of particular security decisions in 20-30 years’ time; this should help with future-proofing. The Lancaster University research (www.security-centre.lancs.ac.uk) forms part of a wider programme that is led by Imperial College London; it also involves Queen’s University Belfast, the University of Birmingham and City University London.