Post-Doctoral Fellowship- IoT network design and security

FM Global is a leading property insurer of the world's largest businesses, providing more than one-third of FORTUNE 1000-size companies with engineering-based risk management and property insurance solutions. FM Global helps clients maintain continuity in their business operations by drawing upon state-of-the-art loss-prevention engineering and research; risk management skills and support services; tailored risk transfer capabilities; and superior financial strength. To do so, we rely on a dynamic, culturally diverse group of employees, working in more than 100 countries, in a variety of challenging roles.

This position is for a limited term of up to three years, renewable each year.  The role is typically focused on performing publishable work as part of a strategic research program under the guidance of a program manager or other senior research staff member(s).

The Equipment, Cyber and Materials Science team is looking for a PostDoc candidate to support our research into IoT network design and security.

As industry expands, so does the demand on technology and its associated architectural frameworks. Isolated infrastructures, such as OT (Operational Technology) Networks, which once relied on ICS (Industrial Control Systems) for data aggregation and reporting now demand faster processing and computing in geographically dispersed locations. To address this demand, devices often referred as the IoT (Internet of Things), are being deployed into existing infrastructures. However, with these implementations, additional requirements regarding protocols, connectivity, network structure, data retention, and analytics can pose security challenges to an established network architecture.

As part of the research you will participate in setting up IoT networks in a lab environment, specifically focused on IoT devices embedded into OT networks. These networks will be subjected to different forms of attacks to understand their resilience under these conditions. Design choices, network monitoring approaches (e.g. self-adaptive intrusion detection) and other defensive measures/security products (e.g. identity and access management approaches, segmentation etc.) will be researched in order to create practical guidance for FM Global’s client companies.