Ernest Foo

Associate Professor Foo's research interests can be broadly grouped into the field of secure cryptographic protocols with an active interest in network security applications. These include specific applications in the areas of industrial control system security and cyber physical systems such as SCADA and the smart grid. Dr Foo has published over 90 refereed papers including 20 journal papers. Associate Professor Foo has extensive experience with computer networking having worked and taught in this area for over 15 years. Associate Professor Foo has also been responsible for the design and development of the QUT SCADA security research laboratory. The SCADA laboratory consists of multiple vendor system miniatures that are run from industrial PLCs. The major systems contain Siemens S7-1200, Siemens S7-300, Allen Bradley Micrologix 1100, and National Instruments Compact RIO controllers. Associate Professor Foo has a good understanding of the IEC 61850 standard for controlling and automating electricity sub-stations. This standard will be key component of the smart grid. Associate Professor Foo has published a paper entitled "Gap analysis of Intrusion Detection in Smart Grids" in the proceedings of the 2nd International Cyber Resilience Conference. This paper won the best paper award at the conference in which it was presented. Since then Associate Professor Foo’s SCADA research has looked at vulnerabilities in Modbus and DNP3 protocols as well as the use of Process Mining and Data mining for attack detection in SCADA systems. Associate Professor Foo is also supervising work in SCADA system monitoring and network mapping. In terms of research grants, Associate Professor Foo has held an (Australian Research Council) ARC Linkage grant with the electricity transmission authority Powerlink Queensland in Australia. The Linkage project extended knowledge of cyber security for control systems in electricity sub-stations. Through his visit and subsequent work with the Institute of Infocomm Research (I2R) in Singapore Associate Professor Foo has gained expertise in security in wireless sensor networks. As a result of this Associate Professor Foo has published four refereed papers in this area. Sensor networks will be a key component of future smart grid and other critical infrastructure architectures. Associate Professor Foo has been the driving force for the Cyber Security: Industrial Control System course that has been conducted annually at QUT since 2013. It is a hands-on security awareness course aimed at control system operators that culminates in a full day Red Team Blue Team exercise. The Red Team works to gain control of a SCADA system through cyber attacks using techniques introduced in the course. The Blue team maintains and defends the same SCADA system using techniques also introduced in the course. The course has had participants from Powerlink Queensland, Energex, Ergon, Stanwell, South Australian Police, Urban Utilities, Coliban Water, South Australia Power Networks, Brisbane Motorways and Queensland Main Roads.