Distributed Systems Security Team

Our Research

Our distributed systems security team focuses on researching and developing cybersecurity solutions for emerging technologies, including Industry 4.0/5.0, AI/ML, 6G, Digital Twin, and Augmented/Virtual Reality. Our primary research focuses on identifying and addressing the security challenges associated with these distributed system technologies, which are rapidly transforming the digital landscape. We aim to develop effective, innovative full-stack security solutions covering two layers. Data and protocol Layer: We aim to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, authenticity, privacy and availability of data and systems in these distributed emerging environments. Intelligence Layer: We aim to build AI-enabled secure distributed intelligence for critical applications such as critical infrastructure.  Our main focus is on three key science challenges. 

Our team is committed to staying at the forefront of the latest advancements in distributed systems security, with a focus on developing cutting-edge approaches to protect against increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. 

Our Vision 

Revamp urgently needed for our Australian critical infrastructure, which is grappling with rising costs and domestic labour crunch, to increase innovation and production through emerging technologies such as Industry 4.0/5.0, AI/ML, 6G, Digital Twin, and Augmented/Virtual Reality technologies. There is unexplored potential for these technologies in areas such as advanced digital manufacturing, critical infrastructure, and the automobile industry, where intelligence is moving swiftly from the centre to the fringe to perform critical tasks in real-time which makes them much more efficient. However, the lack of security standards and unclarity of threat modelling of these emerging technologies pose a major cybersecurity risk, especially in the human and machine collaboration scenarios, including attackers producing fake data, causing service disruption, and data exfiltration. Our vision is to solve cybersecurity issues and propose resilient distributed systems, which are crucial for facilitating the adoption of these emerging technologies.  

The Distributed Systems Security team is working ambitiously to be recognised as one of the top teams in the world in developing cybersecurity solutions for emerging technologies, including Industry 4.0/5.0, AI/ML, 6G, Digital Twin, and Augmented/Virtual Reality in the next five years.  

Meet the Team

Dr Sharif Abuadbba

Team Leader
Senior Research Scientist

For information on staff and students follow the links.

Seminar Series

Our SAO seminars

Our 6G Security and Privacy Seminars