Georgios Kavallieratos successfully completed his PhD trial lecture and thesis defense at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology on Wednesday, the 16th of June 2021, and will be awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Information Security and Communication Technology.
The title of his thesis is “Security of the Cyber Enabled Ship” and the given topic for his trial lecture was “The usage of gamification for cyber security education”.
Today’s leading ship builders and operators go beyond traditional engineering to create remotely controlled and autonomous ships – both variants of the cyber enabled ship. Unless such ships are built with cyber security in mind right from their design phase, we will soon be facing cyber security issues in the shipping industry, similar to those that we are experiencing in other industries that have adopted ICT without properly addressing cyber security issues. Taking a cyber physical system perspective, this research focuses on ensuring the safe and secure operation of the cyber enabled ship. To this end, a reference architecture for the cyber physical systems onboard has been proposed, to allow the security analysis of the cyber enabled ship. Further, relevant security threats and risks have been identified and assessed; security and safety requirements have been identified; and potential attack paths between the ship’s components have been analyzed towards defining a secure system architecture of such vessels. Additionally, the treatment of the assessed security risks has been studied, and optimal sets of security controls have been proposed. Last, a reference architecture of a testbed to validate the results of this project and to test the security posture of the cyber enabled ship’s cyber physical systems has been proposed.
The following committee has been appointed to evaluate his thesis, trial lecture and defense:
- First external opponent: Professor Jianying Zhou, iTrust Centre for Research in Cyber Security, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore, Singapore.
- Second external opponent: Associate Professor Cristina Alcaraz, Computer Science Department, University of Malaga, Malaga, Spain.
- Internal member and committee administrator: Associate Professor Basel Katt, Department of Information Security and Communication Technology, NTNU Gjøvik.
Georgios Kavallieratos carried out his PhD work at the Department of Information Security and Communication Technology, Gjøvik, NTNU.
His main supervisor was Professor Sokratis Katsikas, IIK, NTNU and co-supervisors Professor Slobodan Petrović, IIK, NTNU, Associate Professor Edmund Førland Brekke, ITK, NTNU and Associate Professor Hao Wang, IDI, NTNU.
Congratulations!
