5G DRIVE - Diversified RAN Integration & Vendor Evaluation

For the mobile telecommunications industry, 5G technology opens up a wide range of business options, particularly in the manufacturing, utilities, construction, transportation, retail, and critical infrastructure sectors. This digital transformation will be driven by private networks combined with multiple-access edge computing capabilities that are affordable, secure, scalable, and robust. This is an essential first step toward delivering 5G use cases and applications in these areas. The goal of this project is to create a low-cost, secure, and interoperable 5G Open & Diversified RAN Integration solution for private mobile networks.

Trustworthiness Framework - Metrics and Assessment

This project introduces a web tool's specifications and assessment criteria for evaluating the trustworthiness of Digital Identity Systems. It derives from the framework previously developed as part of the Trustworthy Digital Infrastructure for Identity Systems project. This tool will facilitate the design, development, and adoption of digital identity systems, allowing rigorous evaluation and transparent comparison among different implementations for systems in both the design and operation phases.

AirQKD

AirQKD addresses the challenge of quantum-secure last-mile connectivity between these nodes. It will do so by building a demonstrator for a metropolitan-scale network of free- space QKD links and quantum-enhanced wireless 802-11p links. To fulfil this vision for AirQKD, we create a full ecosystem inserting innovation at all levels: components, systems, connectivity and use-cases, significantly improving upon the current state-of-the-art, creating a UK-first. Building on previous successful demonstrations of innovations in secure and private communications for vehicular systems, WMG will be developing the use case for vehicle systems.

FAIRSPACE

To establish a national asset strengthening the UK’s capability and growing its community in academia, industry and Government such that the UK is recognised as a leading nation in the development of robotics and autonomous systems for space. The aim of the Future AI & Robotics for Space (FAIR-SPACE) Hub is to go beyond the state-of- the-art in robotic sensing and perception, mobility and manipulation, on-board and on- ground autonomous capabilities, and human-robot interaction, to enable space robots to perform complex tasks on long-duration missions with minimal dependence on the ground crew. As part of this project, WMG is developing techniques for security-minded verification of space systems.

SSE4SPACE

This project undertakes a detailed analysis of the secure systems engineering complexities to be addressed by a target collaborative and streamlined SSE4Space framework. We demonstrate that this complexity can be abstracted from the operator through the resulting software tool. We are very conscious that, to be useful, the tool must be comprehensible and usable by non-specialists. The approach to stakeholder engagement and requirements elicitation, use of mock-ups and comparison with existing tool capabilities, and an agile development methodology will result in an easy-to-use software tool supporting the needs of mission system engineers, Technical Officers, Information Technology (IT) and Operations Technologies (OT) Security Officers, Security Accreditation and Authorisation (SA&A) personnel, Information Security Management Systems (ISMS) managers, Project Specific Security Officers (PSSO) and security engineers.

Risk-based Moving Target Defence (RL-MTD)

The asymmetry between offensive and defensive operations, the complexity of threat sources in cyber-physical systems, and multistage segmental intrusions have significantly enhanced the effectiveness of adversaries. Moving Target Defence (MTD) techniques have been recently proposed to reduce that effectiveness with limitations related to the stationarity of security controls and the cost of defence configuration. We propose a security risk-oriented asset re-parameterisation system that leverages machine intelligence to optimise MTD at runtime and address these limitations. The system utilises distributed intelligent agents to capture cyber observables and measure threat exposure and the efficacy of deployed controls coupled with RL in the assets’ re-parameterisation process. DASA funds the project under the Autonomous Resilient Cyber Defence Intelligent Agents competition.

RESI-SPACE

Synchronising activities in space missions requires the continuous protection of space assets. The rapid identification of software vulnerabilities and prevention of their exploitation requires not only appropriate procurement criteria for secure software but equally strict and predefined requirements engineering and security testing methodologies for unclassified space missions. Existing efforts relate to the design and implementation of secure software engineering (SSE) procedures for the protection of these high-value critical mission systems. This work will consolidate and expand existing secure systems' engineering technology building blocks into a Secure Systems Engineering framework (SSEF) in support of GASF effort by incorporating best practices and standard security description references from comparable industries.

Overcome Natural and Attack-based Disruption

To support such rapid reconfiguration of the manufacturing system across the supply network, our vision of this project is to create a practicable methodology for manufacturing systems that can detect a threat and reconfigure themselves rapidly in the presence of an adversary. The work packages developed as part of this research further address the critical challenges outlined above and underpin our vision through the development of 'double lock' system, of physical hash on the product and digital hash on component files secured against a distributed ledger technology, that can be scaled across and tailored to different SC configurations, allowing manufacturing to be responsive to disruption and enable greater resilience and agility in UK manufacturing SCs. This proposal also considers both the current state of the art in academic research, and the fundamental needs and applied research from industry. This research is transformative as it meets the twin hurdle of academic rigour and industrial relevance.