Simon Birnbach awarded UK Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research Fellowship

Senior Research Associate Simon Birnbach has been awarded a UK Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Royal Academy of Engineering, which will support his project on securely fusing cooperative and non-cooperative data for maritime domain awareness. 

Senior Research Associate Simon Birnbach has been awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering UK Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Fellowship. This scheme offers funding to outstanding early career researchers working in areas of interest to the intelligence, security, and defence communities, providing a vital link between these communities and academia. The National Protective Security Authority, Department for Transport, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, Home Office, the National Cyber Security Centre, and UK National Authority for Counter-Eavesdropping are among the organisations represented in the UK Intelligence Community for this scheme.  

I am honoured to receive this prestigious fellowship from the Royal Academy of Engineering. This fellowship will allow me to address critical challenges in the automated exploitation of AIS and SAR data fusion for maritime domain awareness (MDA). The vulnerabilities inherent in the unauthenticated AIS protocol and the limitations of low-resolution SAR imagery present significant obstacles. By grounding our automated systems in a thorough security analysis, we can better understand how these vulnerabilities impact data fusion. My research will facilitate the transition to increasingly automated MDA systems, enabling operators to make informed decisions based on higher-quality data. As maritime threats continue to rise and attackers adapt their strategies to exploit the limitations of current monitoring systems, the importance of access to high-quality and trustworthy data for MDA will only grow. I look forward to collaborating with experts from the IC community to advance our capabilities in maritime security. Senior Research Associate Simon Birnbach

Simon Birnbach is a senior postdoctoral researcher in the Systems Security Lab of Professor Ivan Martinovic and is also a Junior Research Fellow at Kellogg College. His project aims to securely fuse satellite imagery with self-reported ship locations and wireless signal data to enable maritime surveillance systems to uncover advanced attacks and irregular activities at sea, a key challenge for maritime domain awareness (MDA). 

MDA involves the effective understanding of anything that may impact the security and safety of the maritime environment. Vessels maintain MDA by detecting and classifying objects using the automatic identification system (AIS) and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite imagery. These technologies are limited and often require manual intervention. Whilst AIS is precise and updated frequently, vessels can choose to stop sending their data or even falsify their identity and location. SAR can detect these masked or hidden vessels but is updated less frequently, and detection and classification can be made more difficult by a variety of factors including low image resolution, weather conditions, or sea state. 

Birnbach's project will design a system to securely fuse SAR and AIS data, enhancing the performance of both technologies. As part of the project, Birnbach will undertake a thorough security analysis to design an attacker-aware system that understands its own limitations, taking into account commonly confused vessels and understanding optimal collection geometry and conditions to provide confidence scores alongside detections and classifications.  

Birnbach specialises in the security of cyber-physical systems, with a focus on smart home, aviation, and aerospace security. His recent research has involved the development of a transferable fingerprinting scheme to protect legacy data links and onboard data buses used in aviation, and he has co-supervised DPhil students working on topics including satellite security, IoT and wearables security, behavioural biometrics, and network malware detection. 

Find more about the scheme and research projects: New ways to identify hazardous substances and counter malicious use of AI included in UK Intelligence Community Postdoc awards