Research

Research areas include Semantic Web & formal Ontological approaches to access control configuration management, autonomic security, business/risk -driven security, catalogs of best practice. For further information please review the publications section.

Previous Research

Ericsson Security Research 2004

Ericsson OSS Security Architecture: Current State and Challenges Ahead. This research investigated a number of technologies such as security methodologies within the OSS-RC architecture, CORBA, Citrix, security vulnerabilities, Single Sign-on (e.g. Liberty Alliance) etc.
Developing and implementing a simulation model of Trust and Reputation Management within Ad Hoc Systems. It involves game theory, the classical prisoners dilemma game, agents, security mechanisms, and Moore neighbour, Von-Newman, Small World algorithms etc, to effectively spread highly accurate and up to date reputation data within resource sharing and ad hoc systems.

Master of Science Research (2000 - 2002)

Title: Performance Analysis of Host Based Routing

Topics Covered: Linux, TCP/IP protocol stack, Kernel Coding, Router & Forwarding concepts, Network Performance Enhancers, Network Sniffers, QoS Traffic Shaping, developed KETTLE a high performance software tool and so forth

Abstract:
"UNIX-based routers are an integral part of the internet, so understanding their performance is important part of understanding network performance. In order to understand the execution times and behaviour of IP forwarding under Linux, a software tool (KETTLE): Kernel Event Tracing for Time & Logic was developed. Results from this tool and external performance measurements are presented along with an analysis of IP forwarding code path.

In Today's Internet, there is a high demand to forward datagram's efficiently at speeds of gigabit, or even terabits per second. It is important to investigate the performance overheads that manifest themselves in current routers in order to develop new router technologies to cope with the exponential growth of the Internet."

A note on KETTLE:
The tool monitors all internal traffic such as clock cycles through the router. This tool accumulates information on what mechanisms are executed and exactly how long each mechanism spent working on its task for a given datagram travelling through the forwarding IP stack within a router. Using KETTLE, one can accurately deduct at what point bottlenecks occur and provide possible solutions to these problems.

Maynooth Contract Software Engineer Research (2000)

In the summer of 2000, William was employed by the Computer Science Department to research the NP-complete problem domain in regard to the classical Travelling Salesman Dilemma. The project goal was to develop an educational tool to aid students in understanding the nature of this complex NP-complete dilemma within their undergraduate work. It is also used, as one of N.U.I.M’s attractions on Open Day’s to help convey the type of problems that engineers and computer scientists attempt to solve. This java based software was exhibited on the N.U.I. Maynooth stall at the Irish Young Scientist Award (2000).

Maynooth Undergraduate Research (2000)

Title: Databases as a Back-end Resource to the Web Via JDBC, a Java API

Topics Covered: Solaris Platform, Java Technology, Java Servlets, JDBC, SQL, Unix, Databases, Web Server configurations etc.

Abstract:
"Static HTML pages are not sufficient enough for conducting business over the Web. Using a database, as a back-end resource to the web, is vital in today's e-commerce society. The research project developed a scheduling system for the Computer Science department. This allowed lecturers and students to view a dynamic online time table of their current day. Lecturers had permissions to alter this database in order to change or swap courses etc.

The undergraduate project involved building dynamic web applications that incorporated JDBC, Java Servlets, Apache web server, Java Servlet engine, (mini-SQL) database and so forth."