Founded in 1990, the Information Security Group (ISG) is an academic department focusing on Information and Cyber Security within the Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics School (EPMS) at

Royal Holloway Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL), formally incorporated as Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, is a public research university and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It has six schools, 21 academic departm ...

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

. It has around 25 established academic posts, 7 visiting Professors/Fellows and over 90 research students. The Founder Director of the ISG was Professor Fred Piper, and the current director is Professor Chris Mitchell. Previous directors include Professors Peter Komisarczuk, Keith Martin, Keith Mayes and Peter Wild. RoyalHolloway FrontEntrance

In 1998 the ISG was awarded a

Queen's Anniversary Prize The Queen's Anniversary Prizes for Higher and Further Education are a biennially awarded series of prizes awarded to universities and colleges in the further and higher education sectors within the United Kingdom. Uniquely it forms part of the Bri ...

in recognition of its work in the field of

information security Information security, sometimes shortened to InfoSec, is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks. It is part of information risk management. It typically involves preventing or reducing the probability of unauthorize ...

. It has also been awarded the status of Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research (ACE-CSR) and hosts a Centre for Doctoral Training in cyber security (led by Professor Keith Martin). In 1992, the ISG introduced an MSc in information security, being the first university in the world to offer a postgraduate course in the subject. In 2014 this course received full certification from

GCHQ Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the Uni ...

. In 2017 it won the award for the Best Cyber Security Education Programme at SC Awards Europe 2017. Research topics addressed by the ISG include: the design and evaluation of cryptographic algorithms, protocols and key management;

provable security Provable security refers to any type or level of computer security that can be proved. It is used in different ways by different fields. Usually, this refers to mathematical proofs, which are common in cryptography. In such a proof, the capabiliti ...

; smart cards; RFID; electronic commerce;

security management Security management is the identification of an organization's assets (including people, buildings, machines, systems and information assets), followed by the development, documentation, and implementation of policies and procedures for protec ...

; mobile telecommunications security; authentication and identity management;

cyber-physical system A cyber-physical system (CPS) or intelligent system is a computer system in which a Mechanism (engineering), mechanism is controlled or monitored by computer-based algorithms. In cyber-physical systems, physical and software components are deeply ...

s; embedded security; Internet of Things (IoT); and human related aspects of cyber security. The current director of Research is Professor Stephen Wolthusen. The ISG includes the Smart Card and IoT Security Centre (previously named Smart Card Centre, SCC) that was founded in October 2002 by

Vodafone Vodafone Group plc () is a British multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates services in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. , Vod ...

and

Giesecke & Devrient Giesecke+Devrient, also known as (G+D), is a German company headquartered in Munich that provides banknote and securities printing, smart cards, and cash handling systems. History Founded in 1852 by Hermann Giesecke and Alphonse Devrient, th ...

, for training and research in the field of Smart cards, applications and related technologies: its research topics include RFID,

Near Field Communication Near-field communication (NFC) is a set of communication protocols that enables communication between two electronic devices over a distance of 4 cm (1 in) or less. NFC offers a low-speed connection through a simple setup that can be u ...

(NFC), mobile devices, IoT, and general embedded/implementation system security. In 2008, the SCC was commissioned to perform a counter expertise review of the

OV-chipkaart The OV-chipkaart (short for ''openbaar vervoer chipkaart'', meaning ''public transport chipcard'') is a contactless smart card system used for all public transport in the Netherlands. First introduced in the Rotterdam Metro in April 2005, it has ...

by the

Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management The Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management (Dutch: ''Ministerie van Verkeer en Waterstaat''; V&W) was a Dutch ministry responsible for water management, public and private transport and infrastructure. It is now part of the Min ...

. The SCC has received support from a number of industrial partners, such as Orange Labs (UK), the UK Cards Association, Transport for London and ITSO. The current director of the Smart Card and IoT Security Centre is Dr. Konstantinos Markantonakis. The ISG also includes a Systems Security Research Lab (S2Lab), which was created in 2014, to investigate how to protect systems from software related threats, such as malware and

botnet A botnet is a group of Internet-connected devices, each of which runs one or more bots. Botnets can be used to perform Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, steal data, send spam, and allow the attacker to access the device and its conn ...

s. The research in the lab covers many different Computer Science-related topics, such as

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

computer architecture In computer engineering, computer architecture is a description of the structure of a computer system made from component parts. It can sometimes be a high-level description that ignores details of the implementation. At a more detailed level, the ...

program analysis In computer science, program analysis is the process of automatically analyzing the behavior of computer programs regarding a property such as correctness, robustness, safety and liveness. Program analysis focuses on two major areas: program op ...

, and

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

. The current Lab Leader is Dr. Lorenzo Cavallaro. Current and former associated academics include

Whitfield Diffie Bailey Whitfield 'Whit' Diffie (born June 5, 1944), ForMemRS, is an American cryptographer and mathematician and one of the pioneers of public-key cryptography along with Martin Hellman and Ralph Merkle. Diffie and Hellman's 1976 paper ''New Dir ...

, Kenny Paterson,

David Naccache David Naccache is a cryptographer, currently a professor at the École normale supérieure and a member of its Computer Laboratory. He was previously a professor at Panthéon-Assas University. Biography He received his Ph.D. in 1995 from the � ...

, Michael Walker,

Sean Murphy Sean Murphy may refer to: Sports * Seán Óg Murphy (1897–1956), Irish hurler * Seán Murphy (hurler) (born 1947), Irish hurler * Seán Murphy (Gaelic footballer) (born 1932), Irish Gaelic football player * Sean Murphy (footballer, born 1995), Sc ...

and

Igor Muttik Igor Muttik (born 1962 in Russia) is a computer security expert, researcher and inventor. Career Igor Muttik is a Senior Principal Research Architect with McAfee which is part of Intel Corporation since 2011. He started researching computer malwar ...

. Royal Holloway's Information Security Group has been mentioned in popular media, most notably in the New York Times bestseller

The Da Vinci Code ''The Da Vinci Code'' is a 2003 mystery thriller novel by Dan Brown. It is Brown's second novel to include the character Robert Langdon: the first was his 2000 novel ''Angels & Demons''. ''The Da Vinci Code'' follows symbologist Robert Lang ...

Dan Brown Daniel Gerhard Brown (born June 22, 1964) is an American author best known for his thriller novels, including the Robert Langdon novels ''Angels & Demons'' (2000), '' The Da Vinci Code'' (2003), ''The Lost Symbol'' (2009), '' Inferno'' (2013), ...

References

External links

Information Security Group website

Smart Card Centre website

Systems Security Research Lab website

Royal Holloway, University of London website
{{Authority control Royal Holloway, University of London