September 11, 2023

UOW academics awarded Australia-India cyber and technology grant

Funding for international collaboration to devise cloud computing safety guidelines

University of Wollongong (UOW), in collaboration with Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, has received an Australia-India Cyber and Critical Technology Partnership grant to improve privacy in cloud computing.

Funded through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), the grant is designed to promote safety, prosperity and security for the Indo-Pacific region through cyber and critical technology.

The project, led by UOW ARC Australian Laureate Fellow Distinguished Professor Willy Susilo, will work towards developing practical privacy-enhancing cryptographic techniques for cloud computing. The team will be based out of UOW’s Institute of Cybersecurity and Cryptology (i), including Senior Lecturer Dr Khoa Nguyen, ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Fellow Dr Yannan Li and Lecturer in Cyber Security Dr Partha Sarathi Roy. The member-researcher from IIT Kanpur is Professor Manindra Agrawal.

Cloud computing has become an increasingly important part of everyday life, from data storage and processing, to sharing documents and working in international teams. However, it poses significant challenges to safeguarding the privacy and security of sensitive information. The art of digital cryptography provides necessary tools for protecting data in the cloud, but traditional techniques may not be sufficient for addressing the unique challenges presented by contemporary cloud computing.

Standardisation of cryptographic techniques is important to ensure they are interoperable and can be widely adopted across different cloud platforms, applications and countries.

This project will identify various standardisation issues on privacy and security of cloud computing in Australia and India and tackle these issues via innovative privacy-enhancing cryptographic techniques. The team will evaluate the effectiveness of existing technologies by measuring their impact and validating whether an appropriate level of standardisation has been achieved.

“This project will strategically place UOW in India through research collaboration. Cybersecurity research work conducted within the Institute of Cybersecurity and Cryptology at UOW has been at the forefront of the research within Australia, and this project will leverage our strategic position with our Indian partner,” Professor Susilo said.

“Furthermore, this research has great potential to strengthen the collaboration between Australia and India for the future through cybersecurity standardisation.”

The team leverages research partners of UOW and IIT Kanpur, including Amazon, Google and Microsoft, and works with start-ups from UOW’s business incubator iAccelarate as well as with Indian companies. The expertise of the UOW School of Law will also be called upon for consultation on privacy matters.