The University of Waikato’s Cyber Security Lab and the Government of Tonga have signed a MoU to collaborate on cyber security issues.
They have agreed to work on capability building, research collaborations and staff and student exchange “to ensure the success of the lab’s STRATUS project, the Tongan government’s E-Government project and the Tonga National CERT.”
According to the lab the relationship will build on the work of Tongan Student at the University, Siuta Laulaupea’alu who recently graduated with a Master in Computer Science from the university.
Associate professor and head of the Cyber Security Lab, Dr Ryan Ko said the relationship would support the goals of enhancing capability development, and providing a basis for research programs.
“Through Siuta’s project, we were able to develop great synergies and a strong collaborative spirit. This MoU will enhance the ability of both organisations to leverage on Waikato’s cyber security research breakthroughs in data provenance, cyber security visualisation, situation awareness, and applications of homomorphic encryption.”
According to its web site, STRATUS (Security Technologies Returning Accountability, Trust and User-centric Services in the Cloud) will create a suite of novel security tools, techniques and capabilities that will return control of data to cloud computing users. “Project leaders believe STRATUS will create a whole new industry and put New Zealand on the cloud security map,” it says.
The stated aim of STRATUS is “to empower users to be able to control their security of their data in the cloud and to give companies tools and services to sell.”
Ko leads a team of cloud security researchers and practitioners from the University of Waikato, the University of Auckland, Unitec Institute of Technology and the US-based Cloud Security Alliance.