Security, Privacy & Trust

These issues continue to grow in significance. Particularly more so with dramatic developments in technologies and their ubiquitous business applications which affect every part of our society. The current trends clearly indicate that in the future security and privacy expectations will be even more acute. We increasingly witness mobile and large-scale distributed applications using different types of information. They deliver useful services to enterprises and users, fixed and mobile, while interacting over wireless and wired networks. In fact these have become the key enabling technologies for an information-based economy. However, there are numerous problems when dealing with integrated structures supporting different security mechanisms.

The heterogeneous, pervasive, mobile, distributed computing and information infrastructure poses many security and privacy challenges. The strategy of EII is to provide a systematic understanding of the security requirements for distributed computing platforms, network infrastructures and user and business applications in enterprises, while developing sound security models and techniques, proposing suitable trust and security management schemes, validating and formally verifying security properties, evaluating the usability of the proposed schemes and devising practically feasible security solutions. This will enable accurate and timely decisions for enterprises and users. Our approach is both innovative and useful. It not only addresses the theory and design of security models and services but also integrates them within the emerging information infrastructures thereby enhancing the capabilities of users and enterprises. The focus of EII, in this respect, is somewhat unique in that it addresses various technologies (such as platforms, services and applications), and businesses (e.g., different types of policies for various industry segments such as finance, telecommunications, health care and Internet commerce) and investigates their implications for user communities.

Program Coordinator

Prof. Vijay Varadharajan is the Microsoft Chair and Professor of Computing at Macquarie University. His group at Macquarie University is one of the most active and productive research groups in security issues in e-commerce and e-health  applications in mobile and distributed environment, and has received a large amount of research funding from both ARC and industry, including a large Linkage Project with Microsoft. Prof. Varadharajan is a highly distinguished researcher with research awards from several international bodies including UK SERC/EPSRC, European Union Grants, Internal Industry Grants, Australian Research Council (ARC) Grants, Australian University Grants and External Industry Collaborations. He has published some 206 Papers: 42 Journal Papers, 8 Book Chapters, 156 Fully Refereed Conference Proceedings, Some 10 Invited Presentations and Keynote Speeches  and 8 Books (1 Co-Authored and 7 Co-Edited).