Collaborative Surveillance in Security Operations Centres

This PhD project will research human-machine collaboration to support collaborative surveillance in Security Operations Centres (SOCs) to address “alert fatigue”. With cyber security risks increasing daily, security analysts at SOC must prioritise alerts to ensure that critical security issues are identified and addressed promptly and effectively. However, identifying critical alerts in a SOC is a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack when it is moving at fibre-optic speed. This project will address the research question of how humans and AI components can collaborate, getting to the appropriate prioritisation and action, without cognitive overload and attention loss. The AI needs to assist with prioritising alerts, provide rationales for the prioritisation, and provide appropriate visualisations. The human expert needs to inject knowledge to help with prioritisation. The resulting human-AI symbiosis will lead to improved SOC productivity and ease the emotional toll on cybersecurity analysts. The developed solutions will be applicable to any application domain that has a command-and-control centre with situation awareness. 

The project will be part of Data61’s collaborative intelligence (CINTEL) Future Science Platform (FSP) that will develop the science that enables human intelligence and technology to work together across multiple domains, driving sustainable productivity growth and improving both the quantity and quality of jobs for human workers. The project will develop the tools and processes required to integrate artificial and human intelligence and produce a general-purpose technology that could transform various industries and domains.

The student will be supervised by a capable team, including academics from UNSW and researchers from CSIRO's Data61.

Scholarship

• $37,684 per annum (2024 rate) for 3.5 years
• Tuition fee scholarship for International candidates

Eligibility

• Domestic and International applicants
• PhD only

How to apply

Please email a copy of your CV and academic transcripts to Prof Salil Kanhere at salil.kanhere@unsw.edu.au.