Paul Kearney

Professor of Cybersecurity

School of Computing and Digital Technology

Email:: paul.kearney@bcu.ac.uk

Paul Kearney is Professor and Head of Cybersecurity Research in the School of Computing and Digital Technology.

Paul has had a long and varied career in research and development in industry, and has previously worked for British Aerospace, Sharp and BT. He has participated in numerous collaborative research projects, and served on committees and advisory and working groups.

After completing a BSc in Mathematical Physics at Liverpool University and a PhD in elementary particle theory at Durham University, Paul joined BAE Systems, working as leader of a research and development group investigating intelligent on-board systems and advanced software engineering. After ten years, he then joined Sharp Corporation’s then new European research lab in Oxford. He joined BT in 1997, originally researching intelligent agents applied to workflow and other business systems, before being asked to form a new security research team around 2001. He has worked in cybersecurity and related research ever since, spending many years as Chief Security Researcher in BT's Research and Innovation department.

Current Activity

Areas of Expertise

Qualifications

Memberships

Research

Postgraduate Supervision

Publications

Collins, P D B and Kearney P. J. (1984). Regge theory and QCD in large-angle scattering in Zeitschrift für Physik C 22, 277 (1984)

Kearney , P J and Hunt, B (1986). A graphical aid to IKBS program development in Proceedings of the AGARD AMP Symposium on Information Management and Decision Making in Advanced Airborne Weapon System, Toronto, 1986

Kearney , P J (1988). The representation and application of tactical knowledge in Proceedings of the AGARD Avionics Panel Symposium on Near Real-Time Aspects in Air Battle Management, Copenhagen, 1988

Kearney , P J (1991). TMA: a research study in personal time management, Proceedings of the 10th UK Planning SIG Workshop, Cambridge, 1991

Kearney, P J (1992). Experiments in multi-agent system dynamics in Artificial Social Systems: 4th European Workshop on Modelling Autonomous Agents in a Multi-Agent World, MAAMAW’92 (Eds Castelfranchi, C and Werner, E) Lecture Notes in AI 830, Springer-Verlag (1994).

Kearney, P J, Sehmi A and Smith, R M (1994). Emergent behaviour in a multi-agent economic simulation in 11th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, ECAI’94, Proceedings (Ed Cohn, A G), Wiley.

Gibbins, P F, Kearney, P J, Sehmi, A and Smith, R M (1994), Intelligent agents in multimedia systems, Sharp Technical Journal, 60, December 1994.

Sehmi, A, Kearney, P J, Smith, R M and Gibbins P F (1994). Support for distributed multi-agent systems in CKBS’94: Proceedings of the Second International Working Conference on Cooperating Knowledge Based Systems (Ed Deen, S M) DAKE Centre, University of Keele.

Kearney, P J (1995). Intelligent agents and personal electronics in proceedings of Unicom Agent Software seminar London, April 1995. To be published in book form by John Wiley. This paper was also presented at the IEE Professional Group C10 Colloquim on Developments in Personal Systems, June 1995. Digest No: 1995/140

Kearney, P J (1996). Personal agents: A walk on the client side Real-World Applications of Intelligent Agent Technology seminar London, June 1996, Unicom. This paper will also be presented at the IBC Seminar on Intelligent Agents, London June 1996. An earlier version was presented at the IEE Professional Group C3 Colloquim on Intelligent Agents and their applications, April 1996. Digest No: 1996/101

Kearney, P J and O’Brien, P D (1999). The Emerging Enterprise, themed issue of the BT Technology Journal, Vol. 17 No. 4, October 1999 (guest editors)

Swaby, M, Dew, O and Kearney (1999), P J. Model based construction of collaborative systems, BT Technology Journal, Vol. 17 No. 4, October 1999

Kearney, P J and Merlat, W (1999). Modelling market-based decentralised management systems, BT Technology Journal, Vol. 17 No. 4, October 1999

Smith R E, Kearney, P J and Merlat, W (1999). Evolutionary adaptation in autonomous agent systems – a paradigm for the emerging enterprise, BT Technology Journal, Vol. 17 No. 4, October 1999

Smith R E, Bonacina, C., Kearney, P J and Merlat, W (2000). Embodiment of Evolutionary computation in General Agents, Evolutionary Computation, Vol. 8, No.4, Winter 2000.

Kearney, P J, Stark, J. (2000) Decentralised Management of Business Process Networks, Proceedings of the 'Complexity and Complex Systems in Industry' conference, held in September 2000 at Warwick University.

Kearney, P J, Smith R E, Bonacina, C., Eymann, T. (2000), Integration of computational models inspired by economics and genetics, BT Technology Journal Vol. 18, No. 4 October 2000

Kearney, P J, Borrajo, D. (2000), An R&D Road Map for AI Planning applied to Workflow Management, presented at the EB 2000 Conference, Madrid

Rodriguez-Moreno, M D, Kearney, P J (2001), Let's see What Happen if we Integrate AI Planning with Workflow, Proceedings of ES2001, the 21st SGES International Conference on Knowledge Based Systems and Applied AI, Cambridge, December 2001. pp: 299-312. ISBN: 1852335351, Pub. Springer Verlag

Milham, D, Evans, D, Adam Clarke, A, Kearney P J (2002), e2 OSS: e-nabling Service Provider Value Chains, EURESCOM P1106 Summit

Clarke, A, Kearney, P J, Griffiths, S P (2002), B2B Trust Service Provider: Concept Demonstrator, First Internal iTrust Workshop On Trust Management In Dynamic Open Systems, Glasgow, Scotland

Rodriguez-Moreno, M D, Kearney, P J (2002), Integrating AI planning techniques with workflow management systems, Knowledge-Based Systems 15 (2002) 285-291

Caire G, Coulier W, Garijo F, Gomez-Sanz J, Pavon J, Leal, F, Chainho, P, Kearney P, Stark, J, Evans, R, Massonet P (2002), M Agent Oriented Analysis Using Message/UML, in Agent-Oriented Software Engineering II of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer.

Kearney, P J, Brigaud, G. (2003), Untangling Web Service Security, BT Retail white paper

Caire G, Coulier W, Garijo F, Gomez-Sanz J, Pavon J, Kearney P, Massonet P (2003), MESSAGE: A methodology for the development of agent-based applications, in Methodologies And Software Engineering For Agent Systems ed. Bergenti F, Gleizes M-P, Zamponelli F, pub. Kluwer Academic Publishing (New York).

Kearney P J, Chapman J, Edwards N, Gifford M, He L (2004), An overview of web services security, BTTJ January 2004

Kearney, PJ (2004) ‘Message-level security for web services’, Information Security Technical Report Vol 9 No. 3, 2004, pub. Elsevier

Dimitrakos, T (BT), Golby, D (BAe Systems), Kearney, P (BT) (2004), Towards a Trust and Contract Management Framework for Dynamic Virtual Organisations, Proc. eChallenges 2004, Vienna, Austria, 27-29 Oct 2004

Kearney, PJ (2004), ‘Web Services Security: Challenges and opportunities’, , Marcus Evans Conference on Web Services Opportunities in the Telecom Industry, London, 21st-23rd June 2004

Kearney, PJ (2005), ‘Trust and security in dynamically-aggregated web services’, CASSIS Workshop, Nice, March 2005

Bowden, C et al (2005), 'Research and Development for Cyber Trust and Crime Prevention: A Collective Service Providers and Vendors View', published on IAAC (Information Assurance Advisory Council) web site December 2005

Kearney, PJ and K Bosworth, K, ed. (2005), BT Technology Journal themed issue on Identity Management, ed. (BTTJ Vol 23 No. 4) Oct. 2005

Kearney, PJ, ‘Trust and Security in Virtual Organisations’, in BTTJ Vol 24 No. 2, July 2006

Baldwin, A, Beres, Y, Shiu, S and Kearney, P (2006), ‘A model-based approach to trust, security and assurance’, , in BTTJ Vol 24 No. 4, October 2006

Kearney, P and Brügger, L (2007) ‘A risk-driven security analysis method and modelling language’, in BTTJ Vol 25 No. 1

Kearney, PJ, ed. (2007), BT Technology Journal themed issue on Operational Risk Management, ed. (BTTJ Vol 25 No. 1) Jan 2007

Sasse, MA, (UCL), Ashenden, D & Lawrence, D (Cranfield University), Coles-Kemp, L (RHUL), Fléchais, I (Oxford University), Kearney, P (BT) (2007), ‘Human Vulnerabilities in Security Systems’, CyberSecurity KTN Human Factors Working Group White Paper

Kearney, P and Dimitrakos, T (2007), ‘Secure exposure and composition of web services’, RSA Europe conference, London, October 2007

Brücker, AD, Brügger, L, Kearney, P, Wolff, B (2010) “Verified firewall policy transformations for test case generation”, ICST2010 (Third Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation, Paris, April 2010

Kearney, P (2010), ‘Security: the Human Factor’, pub IT Governance

Kearney, P (2011), “Securing Critical Infrastructure from Disruptive Technologies””, CNi Conference at the Counter-Terror Expo, London, April 2011

Brücker, AD, Brügger, L, Kearney, P, Wolff, B (2011) “An Approach to Modular and Testable Security Models of Real-world Health-Care Applications”, to be published at ACM SACMAT 2011

Kearney, PJ (2011) ‘The Rise of Hacktivists’, BT Global Services Secure Thinking and Let’s Talk Security blog sites

Kearney, PJ (2011) ‘Meeting security compliance challenges at affordable cost’, ISF World Congress, Berlin, September 2011

Kearney, PJ (2011) ‘How can the growing challenges of compliance be met at affordable cost?’, Series of articles based on the ISF paper published on the BT Global Services Secure Thinking and Let’s Talk Security blog sites and in integrated form as a white paper.

CSIT (2012) ‘Report on Belfast 2012: World Cyber Security Technology Research Summit’, (Paul Kearney contributed to the section on Adaptive Cyber Security Technology)

Pavlidis, M, Mouratidis, H, Islam, S, Kearney, P (2012) ‘Dealing with Trust and Control A Meta-Model for Trustworthy Information Systems Development’, Sixth International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science, May 16-18 2012, Valencia, Spain (RCIS 2012)

Kearney, PJ (2012) ‘How real is the cyber-threat?’ Community Resilience Current Issues conference, 4th Annual Community Resilience Week, Edinburgh, 20th March 2012

Kearney, PJ (2012) ‘Tossing the Cyber: Community Resilience in Edinburgh’, BT Global Services Secure Thinking and Let’s Talk Security blog sites

Kearney, P, Sinclair, D and Wagner, S (2012) ‘Security Design Patterns in the MASTER Workbench’, CyberPatterns 2012, Abingdon, UK, 9-10 July 2012. Extended and updated papers published as “Cyberpatterns: Unifiying Design Patterns with Security and Attack Patterns”, Ed. Clive Blackwell and Hong Zhu, Springer, ISBN: 978-3-319-04446-0 (Print) 978-3-319-04447-7 (Online), 2014

Kearney, PJ (2012) ‘Towards a C2I Platform for Combating the Cyber-threat’, Keynote talk at Workshop on Information Security Theory and Practice (WISTP) 2012, Royal Holloway, Egham, UK, 20-22 June 2012, Proceedings published as “Information Security Theory and Practice. Security, Privacy and Trust in Computing Systems and Ambient Intelligent Ecosystems”, Ed Askoxylakis, Pöhls and Posegga, pub Springer, Security and Cryptology Series, ISBN 978-3-642-30955-7, 2012

Kearney, PJ (2012) ‘Of blunt instruments and sharp practices’, BT Global Services Secure Thinking and Let’s Talk Security blog sites

Kearney, PJ (2013) ‘Should you get your retaliation in first?’, BT Global Services Let’s Talk Security blog site

Cui, Z, Herwono, I, Kearney, PJ (2013) ‘Multi-stage Attack Modelling’, CyberPatterns 2013, Abingdon UK, 8-9 July 2013

Kearney, PJ (2013) ‘Multi-Stage Attack Modelling: your new weapon against sophisticated cyber attacks’, BT Global Services Let’s Talk Security blog site, 16 August 2013

Pavlidis, M, Islam, S, Mouratidis, H, Kearney, P (2014) ‘Modeling Trust Relationships for Developing Trustworthy Information Systems’, International Journal of Information Systems Modeling and Design 5(1), 25-48, January-March 2014

Ed Paul Kearney (BT) and Zeta Dooly (2015) "Business Cases and Innovation Paths", Report of Working Group 3 of the EU Network and Information Security Platform. (Issue 1.1), May 2015

Kenny Doyle, Zeta Dooly and Paul Kearney (2015) ‘What’s So Unique About Cyber Security?’, 4th Cybersecurity & Privacy Innovation Forum 2015, Brussels, April 2015. Revised selected papers pub by Springer as Cyber Security and Privacy, Communications in Computer and Information Science 530, ISBN 978-3-319-25360-2, Ed. Frances Cleary and Massimo Felici

Paul Kearney (2015) ‘Three reasons we really need innovation in cyber security’. BT Global Services Let’s Talk Security blog site, 20 August 2015

Paul Kearney (2015) ‘Breaking down barriers to security innovation’ BT Global Services Let’s Talk Security blog site, 10 September 2015

EU NIS Platform WG3 (2015), “Cybersecurity Strategic Research Agenda – SRA”, Peer reviewed publication of the European Network and Information Security Platform, August 2015, Paul Kearney is named as a contributing author

Elaine Cook and Paul Kearney (2015), “Security Challenges and Cybercrime: Securing the Internet of Things”, Journal of the Institute of Telecommunications Professionals, Vol 9 Part 4

Prpl Foundation Security Working Group (2016), “Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Embedded Computing”, Peer reviewed publication of the prpl Foundation, January 2016

ECSO (2016), “European Cybersecurity Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) for contractual Public-Private-Partnership (cPPP)”, June 2017, Paul Kearney is named as a contributing author

IoT Security Foundation (2016), “Connected Consumer Products Best Practices Guidelines Release 1.0”, December 2016, https://iotsecurityfoundation.org/best-practice-guidelines/, Paul Kearney is named as a contributing author

ECSO WG6 (Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda) (2017), “Input to Horizon 2020 Work Programme 2018-2020”, January 2017, Paul Kearney was a major contributor and joint editor of the section on Transversal Infrastructures.

Horizon 2020 Protection and Security Advisory Group (PASAG) (2017), “PASAG Working Group 1: Leveraging R&D&I to develop capability and enhance security industry sub-sectors”, January 2017, Paul Kearney is named as a contributing author