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Media Release

March 18 2008

UniSA awarded research funding to combat terrorism

UniSA enhancing counter-terrorism through researchAs part of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s Research Support for Counter-Terrorism program, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, the Hon Anthony Byrne yesterday announced funding for two research projects in UniSA’s Defence and Systems Institute (DASI) to enhance Australia’s counter-terrorism capabilities.

A general security and forensic model for process control and SCADA systems will improve the security of Australia’s electricity, gas, water and oil supplies against terrorism.

The project will initially investigate and map security weaknesses associated with the computer systems and networks that control critical infrastructure.

Associate Professor (Homeland Security) and Director of UniSA’s Forensic Computing Lab, Dr Jill Slay leads the project and says this data will be used to develop a generic security architecture for Process Control and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems.

The $60,000, one-year project will not only receive funding from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet but also involve collaboration with a number of Commonwealth agencies.

DASI’s Dr Elena Sitnikova is a chief investigator in the project.

The second project, A data analysis tool for counter-terrorism collaboration, cooperation and visualisation will use data mining techniques to help counter-terrorism agencies connect terrorism-related dots in massive amounts of data.

Project leader, Associate Professor Shraga Shoval says the new tool will identify hidden patterns and relationships in counter-terrorism databases and present it to the relevant law enforcement agencies in a timely, clear and user-friendly fashion.

This three-year project has a total budget of $175,000 and involves State and Commonwealth law enforcement agencies.

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