Multidisciplinary scientists from The University of Manchester are to work with one of world’s leading e-commerce businesses on a major research project to help prevent cyber security attacks.

A collaborative research team led by Prof Mikel Luján, Director of the Arm Centre of Excellence at The University of Manchester, are to work with THG, one of world’s leading e-commerce businesses on a major research project to help prevent cyber security attacks. THG has world-class technical and research teams who will be applying their findings to the cutting edge of UK and global digital security through the project.

The £5.8m project, known as Soteria, runs for three years and three months starting in January 2021. Soteria is being funded by Innovate UK’s Digital Security by Design (DSbD) initiative which aims to prevent hackers from remotely taking control of digital systems such as autonomous cars, personal computers or smart home security systems, as well as protect businesses from cyberattacks and data breaches.

The Soteria project is also partnering with Oxford University and is one of two new research programmes announced by Innovate UK. Soteria will specifically work with Arm’s technology platform prototype Morello to understand how to improve security and enable the development of new cyber security services and products.

The team at University of Manchester will contribute technical expertise on managed runtimes, such as Java Virtual Machines (JVM), software verification, smart network technologies, and business optimisation. An example of new technology that will be investigated at The University is a JVM capable of harnessing the new security features of the Morello platform central to the DSbD iniative and developed by Arm Ltd.

Managed runtimes are complex software needed to execute the most popular programming languages, such as; Javascript, Java, Python, Ruby, C#. Thus, Soteria has the potential to improve the security of a large share of the software that as society we have come to rely upon.