World's elite digital security experts gather at University of Surrey
Monday 24 August 2009
Leaders in the global fight against digital crime are congregating at the University of Surrey for the 8th International Workshop on Digital Watermarking (IWDW’09). More than 50 delegates from 14 countries are expected to attend one of the most important conventions in the sector, which is being held in the UK for the first time between 24 and 26 August.
Digital Watermarking and complementary disciplines have uses ranging from the fight against international terror networks, to billion-pound industries such as music and film. Digital Watermarking itself refers to technology which allows an invisible watermark to be hidden inside images or video files to protect ownership copyright and prevent illegal tampering. Some of the latest research in the field of image forensics focuses on detecting forged images to aid police investigations and insurance claims.
The related field of steganography hit the headlines a few years ago when it was rumoured that international terrorist networks were utilising encrypted hidden messages on websites to communicate with members. The counter measure for this, steganalysis, attempts to detect and delete these messages, which can be placed secretly on any unprotected website.
Professor Anthony TS Ho, General Chair of IWDW’09 and Chair of Multimedia Security at the University of Surrey, said: “Digital Watermarking and multimedia security are of global relevance, and we are delighted to host one of its premium events at the University of Surrey on its first visit to the UK. With one of the largest research groups of any university in the country, we believe that Surrey provides a great setting for international experts to advance new ideas, network and pursue research collaborations.”
The workshop’s keynote speeches will be given by Professor Fred Piper, founder of the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway, University of London; Ingemar Cox, BT Professor of Telecommunications at UCL and Edward Delp, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University, Indiana, USA. Sponsorships for the event include Thales Research and Technology, Cyber Security KTN, IET, Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology, MarkAny (Korea) and DataMark Technologies (Singapore).
The University of Surrey won the 2006 IET Innovation In Engineering Award in digital watermarking, and currently has an 11-strong research group specialising in watermarking and multimedia security.
Media Enquiries
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