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<b>GCHQ funded PhD Studentship at Security Lancaster</b>
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<div><b>Early Detection of Insider Threats by Autonomous Analysis of User Behaviour Evolution</b></div>
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<div>The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has agreed in principle to fund a PhD studentship in the <a href="http://www.scc.lancs.ac.uk">School of Computing and Communications</a> at Lancaster University in the area of Cyber Security and Natural
Language Processing. The successful candidate will be a member of <a href="http://www.security-centre.lancs.ac.uk/">Security Lancaster</a>, an EPSRC-GCHQ Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research, internationally recognised and unique in its
multi-disciplinary approach.</div>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Project Description:</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Insider threats pose a significant challenge to organisations, with serious potential harm related to the loss of intellectual property, significant financial loss and damage to reputation. The research during this studentship will investigate
the use of techniques from the field of natural language processing to detect the early indicators of an insider threat within an organisation’s unstructured internal data. Alongside this, new intelligent data analysis techniques will be utilised to process
this data to better predict anomalous behaviour and reduce false positives. The research will be required to have an ethics-centred approach, with consideration of subjects’ privacy taken into account. Issues such as the storage of collected data and the resulting
analysis will need to be carefully considered, along with an investigation of the consensus view on different levels of automated analysis.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The successful candidate will be jointly supervised by Professor Plamen Angelov, who brings key expertise in intelligent data analysis, machine learning and knowledge extraction; and Dr. Alistair Baron, who has extensive research experience
in applying natural language processing and machine learning techniques to cyber security challenges.</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Funding and requirements:</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The studentship will be funded for 3.5 years, with GCHQ covering the cost of university fees and providing an enhanced annual stipend to the student of £22,000. There will also be a generous travel budget provided to fund attendance at
international conferences and other events. The studentship is only open to <b>UK nationals</b> and the successful candidate will have regular visits to GCHQ. Therefore, to be considered for the studentship, candidates must be prepared to undergo GCHQ’s security
clearance procedures. More information on the security requirements and vetting procedure can be found at:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.gchq.gov.uk/careers/Documents/nationality_security_reqs.pdf">http://www.gchq.gov.uk/careers/Documents/nationality_security_reqs.pdf</a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.gchq.gov.uk/careers/Documents/vetting_process.pdf">http://www.gchq.gov.uk/careers/Documents/vetting_process.pdf</a></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">The start date for the PhD is negotiable up until September 2015, but is subject to the time taken for security clearance procedures.</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">We expect the candidates to have at least a strong upper second class honours degree in Computer Science or a closely related discipline and a demonstrable interest and passion for research in cyber security. Prior knowledge of cyber security,
natural language processing and machine learning is desirable, but not essential.</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Application:</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the first instance, a CV and a one-page cover letter should be emailed to
<a href="mailto:security-studentships@lancaster.ac.uk">security-studentships@lancaster.ac.uk</a> to arrive no later than 09:00 AM on the
<b>25<sup>th</sup> of August 2014</b>. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Shortlisted candidates will be invited to interview. Following interview, the successful candidates will be asked to formally apply to our PhD program and will also need to go through the security clearance process by GCHQ.</p>
<div>Informal enquiries regarding the studentships can also be directed <a href="mailto:security-studentships@lancaster.ac.uk">
security-studentships@lancaster.ac.uk</a>.</div>
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<div apple-content-edited="true">Dr. Alistair Baron<br>
Faculty Research Fellow<br>
Security Lancaster<br>
School of Computing and Communications<br>
Infolab21<br>
Lancaster University<br>
Lancaster LA1 4WA<br>
UK<br>
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O: B61 Infolab21<br>
T: +44 (0)1524 510037<br>
E: <a href="mailto:a.baron@lancs.ac.uk">a.baron@lancs.ac.uk</a><br>
W: <a href="http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/~barona">http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/~barona</a>
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