PRESENTATION
ARES gathers six of the most dynamic Spanish research groups in the area of information security and virtually all existing Spanish groups in the area of information privacy. Among those groups are the two only ones recognized by the Government of Catalonia as consolidated research groups in information security. The resulting team consists of 57 researchers (64 if new personnel hired in 2007 was counted), of which 41 hold a Ph.D. degree (71.9% of Ph. D.’s); the funds raised by the team in research projects and technology transfer contracts in the last five years amount to more than 6 million Euro, while the average age of the team members is around 35 years. Such indicators give an idea of the team’s achievements and potentialities. In the 2006 Call of CONSOLIDER INGENIO, ARES was one of the 33 teams pre-selected in the first round and got a mark “A-“ in the second round. Following the recommendations by the CONSOLIDER Committee, in this call ARES has been enlarged to a sixth group (UIB) and has strengthened its multidisciplinary nature, with the enrolment of lawyers (UIB) and criminologists (who have joined the Málaga group). The mission of ARES is to advance the state of the art and the practice of information security and privacy through:
- Edge-cutting, world-class research on information security and privacy, making the latter compatible with the former.
- The reinforcement of Spanish participation in the European 7th Framework Programme, specifically in the thematic programmes “Security and space” and “Information and communications technologies”.
- The contribution of ARES to higher education in their activity domain by co-operating with the UNESCO Chair in Data Privacy held by the ARES co-ordinator and the doctoral programmes and Bologna master degrees in which the six groups of the team are involved.
- The constitution of ARES as a national and international reference team in the domain of information security and privacy.
- The fosterage of technology transfer in information security and privacy towards industry and productive sectors, by means of contracts, agreements, patents and training.
A mid-term ambition of ARES is to become an inter-university research center excelling in information security and privacy. This change of legal status will not be operated immediately, but it is hoped that it can be accomplished within the next five years.
The activity areas of ARES include but are not limited to the following: secure electronic commerce, information privacy, critical infrastructures, intellectual property protection and digital rights management, cryptology, smart cards, personal identification and biometrics, access control and authentication, network security, security certification and trust generation, dependability, security and privacy in ubiquitous (pervasive) computing.
The leitmotiv of the proposed research programme is “National and corporate security vs individual privacy in information and communications technologies”.