|
Jacob Williams
|
Year 3 Student – 2021 Intake – Cohort 3 I have a BSc in Computer Science and an MSc in Cyber Security. The focus of my MSc dissertation was visualising malware propagation across local area networks. I previously worked in a security operations centre and have experience with incident triage, firewall configuration, SIEM setup, and customer onboarding. My primary areas of interest are malware analysis of the static and dynamic variety, exploit discovery, and securing / exploiting critical systems. |
|
PhD Project |
Threat Intelligence Pipelines in IT/OT Convergent Networks Industrial control systems (ICS) were long secluded from the outside world, giving them an inherent layer of security. This layer was shed with the emergence of wide-area networks, inter-connectivity of devices, and the commodification of data. This was the IT/OT convergence, where data regarding the operation of ICS started being transferred from the OT network to the IT for quota and commercial monitoring. ICS devices like PLCs, RTUs, and HMIs lack the developments in security usually found in IT devices and an OT network can often contain devices that are decades old. A growing field of research involves implementing secure designs and protocols into these ICS devices in order to maintain the convergence. One area that has yet to fully translate over is that of Threat Intelligence. The aim of my thesis is to investigate the application of IT threat intelligence practices to modern OT networks. This involves researching reliable threat intel generation, enrichment, and application. There are many features that impact these areas, such as threat actor sophistication, patch cycles, time-to-live of intel, and device obscurity. All of this combined would create a Threat Intelligence pipeline that details recommended steps in the process of securing OT networks. Supervisor: Dr Joe Gardiner (Bristol) |
|
PhD Poster |
|
|
Events Attended |
|
| Academic and Industry Placements (Year 1) |
Academic placement undertaken with Sridhar Adepu studying the emergence of malware in industrial control systems.
|
| Publications and Presented Papers | Investigating Malware Propagation and Behaviour Using System and Network Pixel-Based Visualisation (DOI: 10.1007/s42979-021-00926-9) |
| Social Media |
