We have entered into a partnership with Oxford Brookes University to develop anti-abuse technology that will help protect more than 6 million UK domain names, registrant data and the UK Internet as a whole. The partnership is being supported by the Department of Trade and Industry through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) award. As a result, we will be creating two new anti-abuse posts for postgraduates who will spend two years working on the problem. They will receive management training so that they can run the project themselves, including budgeting.

Taking advantage of Oxford Brookes’ highly respected research and academic experience in knowledge discovery and data mining, we will use advanced data mining and visualisation techniques to develop algorithms and software tools that can help detect fraudulent use of our register database.

One researcher will work under Oxford Brookes professor David Duce, who is a world expert on computer visualisation. Creating an image or animation sometimes reveals hidden patterns that could highlight abuse. The other researcher, under senior lecturer Faye Mitchell, will use artificial intelligence techniques to help detect fraud.

“As the organisation responsible for the management of the national .uk registry, Nominet plays a key role at the heart of the UK e-economy. It is essential that we remain ahead of those who wish to exploit the registry,” argues Jay Daley, our Director of IT.

“We’ve developed sophisticated systems to protect the .uk registry; but as we know, we need to make efforts to stay ahead of the abusers by developing increasingly complex systems. The KTP with Oxford Brookes will allow Nominet to learn from respected academics at the University and develop tools to guard against those who seek to disrupt operations, take commercial advantage of the system or steal information.”

Commenting on the partnership, John Corlett, KTP Manager for Oxford Brookes University says, “Oxford Brookes is currently making excellent progress in researching and studying the techniques associated with fighting fraudulent Internet activity. The partnership with Nominet will allow us to build on our existing academic work and develop systems that will help protect the Nominet registry and create a safer UK Internet.”

This entry was posted in August, 2007.
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