Security measures (defence)
Research Topic
Language: English
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Research problems linked to this topic
- How inclusive is the evolving digital identity ecosystem? What are the barriers to inclusion within the system? What are the benefits of digital identity to individuals and businesses? How can we ensure the UK’s digital identity ecosystem is secure? Within the current market which groups are disproportionately affected or are more likely to become left behind as digital identity solutions become more widespread? What are some of the consequences of having excluded groups? Are there differences across different sectors or use cases? How can we build trust in digital identity solutions?
- Detecting threat materials of all kinds without disrupting business, through automation and improved operator effectiveness. For example: combining novel technology with big data analytics; systems approaches; behavioural insights.
- How can new approaches and technologies be applied to enhance the detection of threat materials and items that could harm transport systems?
- Cost - Traditional complex military capability is designed and built to counter technologically sophisticated military adversaries. What low cost, simple solutions exist to address the future spectrum of potential adversary capabilities? How can we ensure military units and capabilities are sufficiently agile to fulfil a range of potential roles and counter the spectrum of adversaries? How do we introduce asymmetric capability to our advantage? How do we integrate new technologies into complex systems at affordable cost?
- Closing the window between becoming aware of a potential technical exploit and action to plug the vulnerability reduces exposure to systems compromise. How can we best apply automation across government’s cyber security practices to ensure that potential exploits are addressed as quickly as possible? What are the risks and opportunities? What are the dependencies on other technology? Are there ethical or considerations in this area?
- Preventing incidents of violence against officers and staff
- How can we best communicate and understand the public’s perception of autonomous vehicles and drone usage in policing?
- Are there different hierarchies, professional groups or user types and behaviours that aid or block cyber security implementation? How do we best understand this both quantitatively and qualitatively?
- How can different actors (e.g. Governments, tech companies, social media platforms, individuals etc.) mitigate these harms?
- What are the most relevant potential changes in the external security and resilience risk environment?
- Does the cyber security of AI models need to follow any novel principles that aren’t set out under existing policy and technology security principles? If so, what are these measures and how do the differ from what exists? How do the vulnerabilities/risk of AI model security differ from existing cyber threats?
- How can connected technologies can be secured when liability and responsibility of product security is unclear, due to convergence of technologies and systems. I.e., taking a system-of-systems approach, how can holistic and robust cyber security be ensured? What is the series of measures required to safeguard the whole system? For example, taxonomy of cyber security risks and threats from the research phase through to product development, deployment and embedding with other technologies and systems. How could the UK produce a world-leading approach to securing emerging technologies through an end-to-end process?
- How to address interactions between safety and security?
- How can the quality assurance of security systems and processes be improved?
- Risk posed across sectors by different types of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and other autonomous and unmanned systems, now and in the future.
- What measures and prioritisation tools can be used to better evaluate and target cyber risks with government interventions?
- Use of canines and alternatives for detection.
- Real world threat detection and mitigation capability, ensuring minimal impact on privacy rights. This includes the exploitation of more of the electromagnetic spectrum; compressive sensing; connectivity; use of video analytics; the internet of things; wider use of smart technologies including tracking and remote systems; advanced materials; informatics. ###Threats in the stream of commerce (including people, vehicles, freight, parcels; to detect threats to safety, security, economy, health):
- How can public messaging on transport systems be used to best effect to safeguard transport users following a security incident or natural hazard disruption?
- Simulants for safe detection equipment testing and canine training Identification of CBRNE materials.
- How might we most effectively measure readiness for high-impact low-probability risks in the assessment of UK resilience?
- Effective use by the police, fire and security services.
- Security in high throughput and heavily populated environments.
- What are the connectivity performance and protection requirements in ports and on sea? Can there be specific international connectivity corridors?
- Novel methods of predicting/detecting explosive manufacture.
- Risks and effectiveness of counter-UAV measures in civilian airspace.
- Fast/high throughput trace detection and body scanners.
- Using biometrics, digital and behavioural aspects to assure identity and to understand and mitigate the possible deception of systems.
- Preventing criminal, hostile or mischievous use of autonomous and unmanned systems, or attacks of the systems themselves, especially through “security by design”.
- Use of technology by organised criminals, and changes to the threat due to future technologies.
- Evaluate current growth barriers or opportunities, understand where action is needed (by the Government or others) to address these barriers, and understand the impact of any interventions.
- Test and evaluation – What are the opportunities to reduce the cost and environmental impacts associated with the test and evaluation of large scale, integrated and complex military systems?
- What cyber interventions that DSIT or NCSC runs are the most effective at reducing cyber incidents and improving cyber resilience? How effective are the NIS Regulations at securing operators of essential services in the UK? How effective is carrying out each of the 10 Steps to Cyber Security at reducing cyber risk?
- Developing assurances and standards for technology designed to safely and effectively respond to instances of malicious, illegal use of autonomous and unmanned systems across sectors.
- Affordable space – How can Defence achieve affordable access to space? How can we harness advances in the commercial sector and maximise our use of space based services? How do we improve our situation awareness of space? Where are the opportunities to reduce the size, weight and power of space based capabilities?
- Understanding implication of future technology - Our service personnel and systems will be threatened by the availability of a greater number of devices with diverse sensing modalities, weapon systems with longer range, enhanced lethality and an adversary who could deploy them in ways that exploit our vulnerabilities. Our ability to objectively assess threats from technological advances in areas such as cyber, unmanned systems and additive manufacturing, and quantify their consequences is key to our understanding of future risk.
- What is the most effective method for incentivising responsible technology design, in terms of cyber security? What are the barriers or blockers for using secure by design principles for cyber security of emerging connected technologies? Where have we seen successes in adopting secure by design principles for connected technologies? Is there a gold-standard or case study where security of a product has been considered during early inception? Has led to greater security of the product and fewer breaches?
- Where are the opportunities for international collaboration to increase the UK’s role and influence over the development of next generation telecommunications technologies - including advanced 5G and beyond?
- Low-cost tools for detecting threat items in bags.
- In what ways do security interventions (under the Telecommunications (Security) Act 2021) in the telecoms market have an impact on investment within the sector? How is this broken down, in a quantitative manner, by fixed and mobile infrastructure?
- What risk is there that generative AI evolves such that the content it generates can avoid detection faster than tools can be developed to detect it? How can international and industry collaboration limit this risk?
- How can throughput of goods and people be increased cost-effectively through transport security systems?
- In security applications, how can we rely on AI to show us all the possible threats (not seeing what we are not shown)?