C4e: CyberSecurity, CyberCrime and Critical Information Infrastructures Center of Excellence
The CyberSecurity, CyberCrime and Critical Information Infrastructures Center of Excellence (C4e) connects research teams at Masaryk University and research complex issues in cyberspace. C4e focuses primarily on research into the technical and non-technical aspects of cyber security under the three pillars of cyber security, the security of critical information infrastructures and related legal issues.
Motivation
The purpose of C4e is to connect expert academic institutions to collaborate in the field of research and development within the research pillars of cybersecurity, protection of critical information infrastructures and law, and the implementation of excellent multi-disciplinary research. The knowledge and experience gained through research activities are then used in the form of continuing education. C4e's collaboration with many public and private actors also leads to a much closer link between research activities and practice.
Technology and specifics
Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is the first of the three research pillars on which C4e is built. The Cybersecurity Pillar is backed by the CSIRT-MU Security Team of Masaryk University in collaboration with DISA laboratory at Faculty of Informatics. The research content of this pillar includes three closely linked areas. Simulate advanced attacks and effective defense by modeling, analyzing, and simulating new types of attacks and developing effective defense strategies. Advanced infrastructure data analysis, including classification and semantic modeling of analytic data and cyber threats, and similarity elaboration for large data analysis, including multimodal search structures and unstructured data analysis.
Critical Information Infrastructure Protection
The protection of critical information infrastructures (CII) within the second research pillar is supported by the Lasaris and Paradise research laboratories at the Faculty of Informatics. The main research activities are divided into the area of simulation and predictive analysis of critical infrastructures, which involves the analysis of systems sensitivity and the identification of error locations. Another area - formal verification of critical infrastructures, involves the development of methods for automatic verification and analysis of large computer systems. The third area dedicated to the implementation of critical infrastructures addresses suggestions for implementing critical infrastructures for security, reliability, and privacy.
Law
The third pillar under the auspices of the Institute of Law and Technology of the Faculty of Law focuses on excellent research into the legal regulation of cybersecurity, crime, and defense, both at national and international level. The focus here is on legal aspects in terms of three different areas, each of which carries with it a set of specific research activities. Cybersecurity law focuses on the rights and obligations of liable persons in cybersecurity as well as on legal issues related to the protection of CIIs. In the area of cybercrime, procedural adjustments to work with electronic evidence, typical forms of cybercrime and their sanctions and the mechanism of cooperation between public authorities in the investigation of cybercrime are crucial. The cyber defense law then consists of aspects such as state sovereignty or attribution in cyberspace.
Further information
The Czech CyberCrime Center of Excellence (C4e) operated at the Institute of Computer Science (ICS), in cooperation with the Faculty of Law in 2013–2015. The main objective was to build a centre for training and education in the field of prevention and repression of cybercrime. It provided services to target groups such as the Czech Police, courts, or state institutions.
It enabled the creation of the C4e Research Center at ICS, which subsequently became the coordinator of the ERDF project CyberSecurity, CyberCrime and Critical Information Infrastructures Center of Excellence.
