Modern societies have become intrinsically dependent on IT systems, networks, and technologies.
These systems are constructed via the integration of diverse and disparate technologies spanning increasingly global scales. As such, they have become difficult to engineer, particularly with respect to security/privacy and real-world operational behaviours.
The InSPiRe labs seeks to address this engineering challenge in the domains of:
- Security and Privacy
- Distributed Software Systems.
A basic tenet to engineering is that one cannot engineer something that one cannot measure, as underlined by Lord Kelvin,
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" When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science."
-- Lord Kelvin (William Thompson)
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The common goal across all InSPiRe work is to strive towards quantitatively measured research results. This is a fundamental tenet of engineering solutions in enterprise-scale cyber-security, privacy, and distributed software systems.
Supporting this research is a, first-of-its-kind in Canada, purpose-build facility dedicated to reproducing enterprise-scale network environments while meeting the full tenets of scientific control and repeatability.
This facility consists of:
- $500k+ in hardware
- an additional $250k+ investment in the R&D of its associated control/management software system.
Current InSPiRe Research Areas
The InSPiRe lab's current research activities cover a number of projects,
All of these research projects have at their core a strong focus needed to meet the tenets of rigorous scientific research and particularly the need to achieve quantifiably measurable results.
This is a particularly challenging and important focus in the InSPiRe lab's security and privacy research activities, since achieving quantitative metrics is one of the four Grand Challenges in Trustworthy Computing [Eugene Spafford, 2003].
The InSPiRe Laboratory is also affiliated with two major Canada wide cyber-security research initiatives (
see Research Collaborations)
A number of active InSPiRe research programs involve industrial and/or governmental collaborations. A core aspect of the InSPiRe research activities is to address real-world problems in manners which are real-world applicable.
Other Research
In addition to the above research, Dr. Neville is also actively involved with other researchers and research labs on campus. These collaborations focus on the same core engineering technologies used in the InSPiRe focused research (i.e. primarily the intersection of signal processing and artificial intelligence technologies).
The other UVic labs which InSPiRe (or members of InSPiRe) currently collaborates with are:
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