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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: EP/J020591/1
Title: Evaluating the Usability, Security, and Trustworthiness of Ad-hoc Collaborative Environments (EUSTACE)
Principal Investigator: Flechais, Professor I
Other Investigators:
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Dr S Faily
Project Partners:
Department: Computer Science
Organisation: University of Oxford
Scheme: Standard Research
Starts: 30 May 2012 Ends: 29 May 2013 Value (£): 120,779
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Computer Sys. & Architecture Fundamentals of Computing
Information & Knowledge Mgmt Modelling & simul. of IT sys.
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
Aerospace, Defence and Marine Information Technologies
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Panel DatePanel NameOutcome
09 Feb 2012 Data Intensive Systems (DaISy) Announced
Summary on Grant Application Form
Ensuring confidence in collaborative working is an important concern; Government work is increasingly collaborative in nature and needs to be enabled by advances in ICT supporting the provision of collaborative working environments. Part of this challenge involves managing rapidly changing situations, where prospective collaborators join and existing collaborators leave a coalition, without compromising security requirements.

The aim of the EUSTACE project is to develop a decision-making framework and tool support for rapidly evaluating the security implications of ad-hoc collaborative work. We propose a framework that reuses existing models in Security, HCI, and Computer Science and makes these amenable to automated analysis and tool support.

The framework describes how formal specifications of implied behaviour are generated from existing usability and system models (such as personas and use cases) and combined with formal specifications of security requirements (derived from existing policies and requirements). A model checker is then used to analyse these specifications for failures and contradictions. These are then visualised in a collaborative work model that captures elements of the system, its users and their activities. The failures and contradictions are then highlighted in this model, providing the means of rapidly evaluating whether a proposed collaboration is likely to create security problems.
Key Findings
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Potential use in non-academic contexts
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Summary
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Organisation Website: http://www.ox.ac.uk