The University of Bristol is a key part of a new initiative working on cybersecurity in the Internet of Things (IoT).

The PETRAS (privacy, ethics, trust, reliability, acceptability, and security) National Centre of Excellence for IoT Systems Cybersecurity brings together the expertise of high-end specialists whose research focus will be on emerging opportunities and threats in the digital world.

Bristol has hosted an IoT boost centre for the last few years.

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The centre will explore the use of edge computing in economy and society, and how Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies will impact on the internet and local IoT networks.

Led by UCL in London, the centre brings together 11 universities and 110 industrial partners.

Professor Awais Rashid, an expert in cyber security from Bristol’s Faculty of Engineering, said:

“Intelligent connected devices, drawing upon IoT technologies and AI, will see increased integration in systems that are critical to functioning of society – ranging from infrastructures that generate and distribute energy, treat and deliver water to our homes through to the supply chains and logistics that ensure the continuity of food supply to our families. The safety and continued operation of these critical systems is fundamentally reliant on their cyber security,” said Prof Awais Rashid of the Department of Engineering.

“This is a central focus of our cyber security research at the University of Bristol and we are delighted to be a partner of the PETRAS National Centre of Excellence for IoT Systems Cybersecurity to collaborate with other research and industry organisations  to ensure that such critical systems remain secure and hence, safe and undisrupted.”

Alongside Bristol are Lancaster University, University of Oxford, University of Warwick, Cardiff University, University of Edinburgh, University of Southampton, University of Surrey, Newcastle University and the University of Nottingham.

It will manage a series of open academic funding calls, the first of which will be announced in summer 2019.

The PETRAS centre is holding a seminar in London on 1st and 2nd May, details are at www.petrashub.org

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