The National Australia Bank is teaming up with Macquarie University to develop methods to pre-empt cyberattacks on financial institutions.
NAB, one of Australia's largest banks, is hoping the joint exercise with the university will result in methodologies to shut down Web-based attacks such as the denial of service (DoS) attack it experienced in October last year.
"With criminals adapting their cybercrime techniques as consumers become more aware of scams, the university lab will be able to use the intelligence to outsmart criminals," said Gary Blair, NAB's general manager of technology risk and security.
The research will address threats to banking security such as phishing, fraud, DoS attacks and the illegal trade of customer identities.
The exercise will involve 15 academics and four Ph.D. students from the university's division of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism and its division of Information and Communication Sciences. The group will work closely with the Australian High Tech Crime Center (AHTCC).
NAB has committed at least two IT security professionals from within its ranks, who have experience working with the AHTCC.
"[The research] will be looking at natural language techniques to identify whether an e-mail is a phishing attack," Ben Smith, business development manager for Macquarie University's Division of Information and Communication Sciences told ZDNet Australia.
"It will also be looking at botnet intrusion attacks and counter measures to that threat," he said.
AHTCC's involvement will help the group investigate methods to pinpoint the origins of phishing attacks as well as identify markets where stolen customer information is traded.
"They're trying to understand the dynamics of that market place to work with the authorities and share the information," said Smith.
The project is being jointly funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) and NAB. The ARC will fund three Ph.D. students over a three-year period, costing a total of US$196,700 (AU$225,000), while NAB has committed to match this funding over the three-year period, according to Macquarie University's Smith.
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