Dr Sam De Silva, Partner, Manches LLP
Thursday 7th March 2013 – 7:30pm
Oxford e-Research Centre, 6 Keble Road, Oxford, OX1 3QG

Many businesses consider outsourcing because of cost savings, improved quality of the outsourced services and the opportunity to focus on its core competencies. One challenge in outsourcing which needs to be considered is the security risks. To a certain extent, such risks result because some parts of the customer’s IT infrastructure and processes are now under the control of a third party, the outsourcing service provider. The purpose of the session is to provide an outline of how the outsourcing contract between the customer and service provider can be used to manage such security risks.  Key issues in the contract which should be addressed to ensure that security risks are managed include: (1) addressing security in transition arrangements; (2) structuring and drafting the security requirements appropriately; (3) ensuring the customer has sufficient security audit rights; and (4) managing the risks of the service provider using shared environments.

About Dr. Sam De Silva

http://www.manches.com/people/sam-desilva

Event Information

The meeting is on Thursday 7 March 7.00 for 7.30 and ends around 9.00.

It will be held at the Oxford e-Research Centre, 6 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3QG.

Sandwiches and light refreshments are available from 7.00pm.

Meetings are open to non-members and free.

Mike Richards, Open University
Thursday 14th June 2012 – 7:30pm
Oxford e-Research Centre, 6 Keble Road, Oxford, OX1 3QG

This future was conceived by Mark Weiser, chief scientist at Xerox PARC – where the PC was invented. In 1991, writing in Scientific American, he described a future where computers and data had merged seamlessly with the environment, and gave it a name – ubiquitous computing. Weiser’s realisation was that Moore’s Law inevitably meant computers would continue to become cheaper. We wouldn’t just own one computer, we would own, or interact with tens, hundreds, even thousands of them. The cost of adding a computer to a manufactured object would be far outweighed by the benefits it brought. In time, almost any manufactured object would contain a computer. The computer as a discrete, utilitarian box would disappear, instead it would come in an unimaginable number of shapes and forms, from smartphones to game consoles, domestic appliances to cars, even embedded in the infrastructure of our buildings and cities.

The ubicomp revolution forecast twenty years ago is quietly emerging all around us. It comes from any number of places – well-established companies, novel start-ups and universities. It is chaotic and exciting, and it is developing at incredible speed. The ubicomp world is becoming real whether we want it or not. Are we prepared for it? We will engage with new technology seeing its benefits, or will we recoil, terrified of the threats? Can we make the considered judgements needed to say what is, and what is not acceptable in a democratic society? Experience suggests that novel technologies, such as nuclear power and genetic modification are initially welcomed by society; but go on to engender distrust, even hatred. Areas of science and engineering can no longer be discussed in rational terms such are the emotions they bring with them. We cannot risk ubicomp following this path.

Now is the time to have an open and frank conversation to which everyone, not just those in the technology sector, is invited. We need to discuss how we build the best possible future based on technology, but not enslaved to it, a future where individual liberty and that of wider society are protected and enhanced by sensitive and appropriate uses of digital technology. A future where the next five billion people who have never used the Internet are welcome and bring their imagination and potential.

So we’ve made a start.

We think the best way to understand the future is to build it.

Over the last few years we have designed and built hardware and software that allows novice learners to explore ubiquitous computing. We call our hardware the SenseBoard; a simple ubiquitous computing laboratory that fits in the palm of your hand. A SenseBoard contains a number of sensors, some programmable lights and a few controls. But you can make it do more, by plugging in motors or additional sensors which are supplied along with the board. Our software, Sense, lets beginners design sophisticated projects without having to learn complex programming languages.

More than 4,500 students have already begun exploring ubiquitous computing; creating their own projects and sharing their findings with one another. We have challenged them to answer questions such as: Who owns your data? Where is it stored? How is it used? Can I opt out? Can it be switched off? Who is in control? And what if it all goes wrong?

Event Information

The meeting is on Thursday 14 June, 7.00 for 7.30 and ends around 9.00.

It will be held at the Oxford e-Research Centre, 6 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3QG.

Sandwiches and light refreshments are available from 7.00pm.

Meetings are open to non-members and free.

Professor Joël Ouaknine, University of Oxford

Abstract: Our society is becoming increasingly reliant on computer systems; think of mobile phones, SatNav, the Internet, and so on. A modern car typically harbours tens to hundreds of microprocessors, themselves running several tens of million lines of code, controlling such critical components as fuel injection, airbags, and anti-lock braking systems. Many of these devices operate in the background, reacting in real-time to a complex environment, and subject to a wide array of functional and timing constraints. A major modern scientific challenge is to devise effective methodologies for accurately modelling and analysing such real-time computer systems, in order to verify and guarantee that they function as they are intended to.

In this talk, I would like to describe some of the fundamental paradigms and algorithms for reasoning about real-time systems. Perhaps surprisingly, several basic questions of decidability and complexity turn out to be remarkably difficult, and a number of problems remain open after some two decades of work in the field. I will present, at a high level, some of the deep connections that are found between real-time verification and mathematical logic, automata theory, combinatorics, and graph theory.

Finally, I will discuss how we expect to translate parts of the rich body of theoretical work in real-time systems into concrete engineering achievements, in the context of ongoing collaborations with industrial partners from the automotive and avionics sectors.

Bio: Joel Ouaknine is Professor of Computer Science at Oxford University, and a Fellow of St John’s College. He holds a BSc and MSc in Mathematics from McGill University, and received his PhD in Computer Science from Oxford in 2001. He subsequently did postdoctoral work at Tulane University and Carnegie Mellon University, and more recently held visiting positions at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Cachan, France. In both 2007 and 2008 he received an Outstanding Teaching Award from Oxford University, and the following year he was awarded an EPSRC Leadership Fellowship, enabling him to focus (almost) exclusively on research for a period of five years. He is the recipient of the 2010 Roger Needham Award, given annually "for a distinguished research contribution in Computer Science by a UK-based researcher within ten years of his or her PhD." His research interests include the verification of real-time, probabilistic, and infinite-state systems (e.g. model-checking algorithms, decision problems, complexity), logic and applications to verification, software analysis, concurrency, and automata theory.

Event Information

The meeting is on Thursday 17 May, 7.00 for 7.30 and ends around 9.00.

It will be held at the Oxford e-Research Centre, 6 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3QG.

Sandwiches and light refreshments are available from 7.00pm.

Meetings are open to non-members and free.

Andy Piper, IBM Hursley Lab

Thursday 16th February 2012 – 7:30pm

Oxford e-Research Centre, 6 Keble Road, Oxford, OX1 3QG

Interconnectivity is one of the key aspects to enabling smarter working and a Smarter Planet. IBM’s Hursley Lab in the UK has been at the heart of inter-application and inter-device messaging for many years, and this talk will cover some of the innovations that have come from that lab and are now being implemented around the world.

A PDF poster to aid in promoting this event can be downloaded here  Connecting A Smarter Planet.

Event Information

The meeting is on Thursday 16 February, 7.00 for 7.30 and ends around 9.00.

It will be held at the Oxford e-Research Centre, 6 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3QG.

Sandwiches and light refreshments are available from 7.00pm.

Meetings are open to non-members and free.

Professor Heinz Wolff

Venue: Sophos plc, Abingdon OX14 3YP

Professor Heinz Wolff is perhaps best known to the general public for his appearances in television series such as Young Scientist of the Year and The Great Egg Race. He is an entertaining and humorous speaker. He will carry out experiments in front of the audience and explain many of the solutions that science brings to our everyday lives which will be fascinating to both young and old in the audience.

Bookings required for this event. Please follow the appropriate link below to register your attendance.

BCS Member: https://events.bcs.org/book/133/

Non-Member: https://events.bcs.org/book/139/