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  • Dr Leslie Sikos

    Dr Leslie Sikos

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Dr Leslie Sikos

Senior Lecturer

Staff Member Details
Telephone: +61 8 6304 5189
Email: l.sikos@ecu.edu.au
Campus: Joondalup  
Room: JO23.246  
ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3368-2215

Leslie is a senior lecturer in cybersecurity at the School of Science and the course coordinator of Bachelor of Computer Science.

Current Teaching

  • CSG2305 Computer Forensics
  • CYB6015 Cybersecurity Incident Detection and Response

Current Coordination

  • U65 Bachelor of Computer Science

Background

Leslie F Sikos, PhD, SMIEEE, MACS CP, is a computer scientist specialising in network forensics and cybersecurity applications powered by artificial intelligence and data science. He has worked both in academia and the industry, and has 20+ industry certificates; he is a ThreatConnect Analyst and an AccessData Certified Investigator, holds the Splunk User Behavior Analytics and the Autopsy Basics and Hands-On Certificates, and completed the OSForensics Triage Certification. He is an active member of the research community as an author, editor, reviewer, conference organiser, and speaker. His community engagement includes public talks, media appearances on ABC News, and articles in professional magazines. He is a reviewer at flagship journals in cybersecurity, such as Computers & Security, Crime Science, and IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing. He is a volume editor of Springer’s Advanced Information & Knowledge Processing and Intelligent Systems Reference Library book series. As an invited expert, he reviews book proposals in computer science for Springer and Taylor & Francis. Dr Sikos published more than 20 books; his most influential books are AI in Cybersecurity and Data Science in Cybersecurity and Cyberthreat Intelligence.

Professional Memberships

  • Since 2017 - Association for Computing Machinery, ACM (Member)
  • Since 2017 - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, IEEE (Member; since 2020, Senior Member)
    • IEEE Computer Society’s Technical Committee on Security and Privacy (Member)
    • IEEE Special Interest Group on Big Data for Cyber Security and Privacy (Founding member)
  • Since 2019 - Australian Computer Society, ACS (member; since 2020, certified professional member)
  • Since 2020 – Australian Information Security Association, AISA (Member)

Research Areas and Interests

  • Cybersecurity
  • Data Science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Digital Forensics

Qualifications

  • Doctor of Philosophy, The Flinders University of South Australia, 2018.

Research Outputs

2024

Book Chapters

  • Grojek, A., Sikos, L., Holmes, D., Guidetti, O. (2024). Incident response drills on cyber ranges: Enhancing cyber-defence education. Psybersecurity: Human Factors of Cyber Defence (202-226). CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781032664859-9.
  • Sikos, L., McKee, M., Ibrahim, A., Johnson, N. (2024). Human skills and sociocultural impacts of K-12 cyber security education. Psybersecurity: Human Factors of Cyber Defence (183-201). CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781032664859-8.

Journal Articles

Reports

  • Johnson, N., Sikos, L., Ibrahim, A., McKee, M. (2024). National Cyber Security Licence Consultation Report. Joondalup. Edith Cowan University. https://doi.org/10.25958/s470-wm37.

2023

Book Chapters

  • Bughio, K., Sikos, L. (2023). Knowledge Organization Systems to Support Cyber-Resilience in Medical Smart Home Environments. Cybersecurity for Smart Cities: Practices and Challenges (61–69). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24946-4_5.
  • Sikos, L. (2023). Learning Environments for Digital Forensics Teaching in Higher Education. Cybersecurity Teaching in Higher Education (127–139). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24216-8_6.

Journal Articles

  • Alatram, A., Sikos, L., Johnstone, M., Szewczyk, P., Kang, JJ. (2023). DoS/DDoS-MQTT-IoT: A dataset for evaluating intrusions in IoT networks using the MQTT protocol. Computer Networks, 231(2023), Article number 109809. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2023.109809.
  • Malik, I., Ibrahim, A., Hannay, P., Sikos, L. (2023). Developing Resilient Cyber-Physical Systems: A Review of State-of-the-Art Malware Detection Approaches, Gaps, and Future Directions. Computers, 12(4), Article number 79. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers12040079.
  • Sikos, L. (2023). Cybersecurity Knowledge Graphs. Knowledge and Information Systems, 65(9), 3511-3531. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10115-023-01860-3.
  • Sikos, L., Valli, C., Grojek, A., Holmes, D., Wakeling, S., Cabral, WZ., Karie, NM. (2023). CamDec: Advancing Axis P1435-LE video camera security using honeypot-based deception. Journal of Computer Virology and Hacking Techniques, 2023(Article in press), 11 pages. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11416-023-00463-4.

Reports

  • Johnson, N., Ibrahim, A., Sikos, L., McKee, M. (2023). Going beyond: Cyber security curriculum in Western Australian primary and secondary schools. Final report.. Joondalup. Edith Cowan University. https://doi.org/10.25958/41ZN-5R55.

2022

Book Chapters

Journal Articles

  • Rashid, B., Ahmed, M., Sikos, L., Haskell-Dowland, P. (2022). Anomaly Detection in Cybersecurity Datasets via Cooperative Co-Evolution-Based Feature Selection. ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems, 13(3), 1-39. https://doi.org/10.1145/3495165.

Conference Publications

  • Cabral, WZ., Sikos, L., Valli, C. (2022). Shodan Indicators Used to Detect Standard Conpot Implementations and Their Improvement Through Sophisticated Customization. 2022 IEEE Conference on Dependable and Secure Computing (1–7). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/DSC54232.2022.9888911.

Reports

  • Johnson, N., Ibrahim, A., Sikos, L., Glowrey, C. (2022). Cyber security curriculum in Western Australian primary and secondary schools: Interim report. Curriculum mapping.. Mt Lawley. Edith Cowan University. https://doi.org/10.25958/x9r3-d254.

2021

Book Chapters

  • Sikos, L. (2021). The Evolution of Context-Aware RDF Knowledge Graphs. Provenance in Data Science: From Data Models to Context-Aware Knowledge Graphs (1–10). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67681-0_1.
  • Sikos, L. (2021). Contextualized Knowledge Graphs in Communication Network and Cyber-Physical System Modeling. Provenance in Data Science: From Data Models to Context-Aware Knowledge Graphs (47–58). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67681-0_4.
  • Kang, J., Sikos, L., Yang, W. (2021). Reducing Attack Surface of Edge Computing IoT Networks via Hybrid Routing Using Dedicated Nodes. Secure Edge Computing: Applications, Techniques and Challenges (97–111). CRC Press. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ecuworkspost2013/10795.

Journal Articles

  • Sikos, L. (2021). AI in Digital Forensics: Ontology Engineering for Cybercrime Investigations. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Forensic Science, 3(3), Article number e1394. https://doi.org/10.1002/wfs2.1394.
  • Ahmed, M., Byreddy, S., Nutakki, A., Sikos, L., Haskell-Dowland, P. (2021). ECU-IoHT: A dataset for analyzing cyberattacks in Internet of Health Things. Ad Hoc Networks, 122(1 November 2021), Article number 102621. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adhoc.2021.102621.

Conference Publications

  • Cabral, WZ., Valli, C., Sikos, L., Wakeling, S. (2021). Advanced Cowrie Configuration to Increase Honeypot Deceptiveness. ICT Systems Security and Privacy Protection: 36th IFIP TC 11 International Conference, SEC 2021 (317–331). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78120-0_21.

2020

Book Chapters

  • Sikos, L. (2020). The Formal Representation of Cyberthreats for Automated Reasoning. Data Science in Cybersecurity and Cyberthreat Intelligence (1-12). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38788-4_1.
  • Flotyński, J., Malamos, AG., Brutzman, D., Hamza-Lup, FG., Polys, NF., Sikos, L., Walczak, K. (2020). Recent Advances in Web3D Semantic Modeling. Recent Advances in 3D Imaging, Modeling, and Reconstruction (23–49). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-5294-9.ch002.

Journal Articles

  • Sikos, L. (2020). Packet Analysis for Network Forensics: A Comprehensive Survey. Forensic Science International: Digital Investigation, 32(March 2020), article number 200892. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsidi.2019.200892.
  • Rashid, B., Ahmed, M., Sikos, L., Haskell-Dowland, P. (2020). Cooperative co-evolution for feature selection in Big Data with random feature grouping. Journal of Big Data, 7(1), Article number 107. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-020-00381-y.
  • Sikos, L., Philp, D. (2020). Provenance-Aware Knowledge Representation: A Survey of Data Models and Contextualized Knowledge Graphs. Data Science and Engineering, 5(3), 293-316. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41019-020-00118-0.
  • Rashid, B., Ahmed, M., Sikos, L., Haskell-Dowland, P. (2020). A Novel Penalty-Based Wrapper Objective Function for Feature Selection in Big Data using Cooperative Co-Evolution. IEEE Access, 8(2020), 150113-150129. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3016679.
  • Sadik, S., Ahmed, M., Sikos, L., Islam, AN. (2020). Toward a Sustainable Cybersecurity Ecosystem. Computers, 9(3), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers9030074.

Conference Publications

  • Yang, W., Johnstone, M., Sikos, L., Wang, S. (2020). Security and Forensics in the Internet of Things: Research Advances and Challenges. Proceedings - 2020 Workshop on Emerging Technologies for Security in IoT, ETSecIoT 2020 (12-17). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.. https://doi.org/10.1109/ETSecIoT50046.2020.00007.

2019

Book Chapters

  • Sikos, L., Philp, D., Howard, C., Voigt, S., Stumptner, M., Mayer, W. (2019). Knowledge Representation of Network Semantics for Reasoning-Powered Cyber-Situational Awareness. AI in Cybersecurity (). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98842-9_2.

Conference Publications

  • Flotyński, J., Brutzman, D., Hamza-Lup, FG., Malamos, A., Polys, N., Sikos, L., Walczak, K. (2019). The Semantic Web3D: Towards Comprehensive Representation of 3D Content on the Semantic Web. 2019 International Conference on 3D Immersion (IC3D) Proceedings (1-9). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/IC3D48390.2019.8975906.
  • Sikos, L. (2019). Knowledge Representation to Support Partially Automated Honeypot Analysis Based on Wireshark Packet Capture Files. Intelligent Decision Technologies 2019: Proceedings of the 11th KES International Conference on Intelligent Decision Technologies (KES-IDT 2019) (345–351). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8311-3_30.
  • Philp, D., Chan, N., Sikos, L. (2019). Decision Support for Network Path Estimation via Automated Reasoning. Intelligent Decision Technologies 2019: Proceedings of the 11th KES International Conference on Intelligent Decision Technologies (KES-IDT 2019) (335–344). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8311-3_29.
  • Cabral, WZ., Valli, C., Sikos, L., Wakeling, S. (2019). Review and Analysis of Cowrie Artefacts and their Potential to be Used Deceptively. Proceedings of 6th Annual Conference on Computational Science & Computational Intelligence (166-171). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.. https://doi.org/10.1109/CSCI49370.2019.00035.

2018

Book Chapters

  • Sikos, L. (2018). Ontology-Based Structured Video Annotation for Content-Based Video Retrieval via Spatiotemporal Reasoning. Bridging the Semantic Gap in Image and Video Analysis (97–122). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73891-8_6.

Journal Articles

Conference Publications

  • Sikos, L. (2018). Handling Uncertainty and Vagueness in Network Knowledge Representation for Cyberthreat Intelligence. Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (6 p.). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/FUZZ-IEEE.2018.8491686.
  • Sikos, L., Stumptner, M., Mayer, W., Howard, C., Voigt, S., Philp, D. (2018). Representing Network Knowledge Using Provenance-Aware Formalisms for Cyber-Situational Awareness. Procedia Computer Science (29–38). Science Direct. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2018.07.206.
  • Sikos, L., Stumptner, M., Mayer, W., Howard, C., Voigt, S., Philp, D. (2018). Automated Reasoning over Provenance-Aware Communication Network Knowledge in Support of Cyber-Situational Awareness. Knowledge Science, Engineering and Management 11th International Conference, KSEM 2018 Changchun, China, August 17–19, 2018 Proceedings, Part II (132–143). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99247-1_12.
  • Sikos, L., Philp, D., Voigt, S., Howard, C., Stumptner, M., Mayer, W. (2018). Provenance-Aware LOD Datasets for Detecting Network Inconsistencies. Joint Proceedings of the International Workshops on Contextualized Knowledge Graphs, and Semantic Statistics co-located with the 17th International Semantic Web Conference (Article 3). RWTH.

2017

Journal Articles

  • Sikos, L. (2017). A Novel Ontology for 3D Semantics: Ontology-Based 3D Model Indexing and Content-Based Video Retrieval Applied to the Medical Domain. International Journal of Metadata Semantics and Ontologies, 12(1), 59–70. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJMSO.2017.087702.
  • Sikos, L. (2017). RDF-Powered Semantic Video Annotation Tools with Concept Mapping to Linked Data for Next-Generation Video Indexing: A Comprehensive Review. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 76(12), 14437–14460. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-016-3705-7.

Conference Publications

  • Sikos, L. (2017). Utilizing Multimedia Ontologies in Video Scene Interpretation via Information Fusion and Automated Reasoning. 2017 Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems (91–98). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.15439/2017F66.
  • Sikos, L. (2017). 3D Model Indexing in Videos for Content-Based Retrieval via X3D-Based Semantic Enrichment and Automated Reasoning. 22nd International Conference on 3D Web Technology (Article No. a19). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3055624.3075943.
  • Sikos, L. (2017). Spatiotemporal Reasoning for Complex Video Event Recognition in Content-Based Video Retrieval. Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Systems and Informatics 2017 (704–713). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64861-3_66.

2016

Conference Publications

2015

Conference Publications

  • Sikos, L., Powers, DM. (2015). Knowledge-Driven Video Information Retrieval with LOD: from Semi-Structured to Structured Video Metadata. Proceedings of the Eighth Workshop on Exploiting Semantic Annotations in Information Retrieval (35–37). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2810133.2810141.

2011

Books

Research Projects

  • In-Circuit Forensic Analysis of IoT Memory Modules, Cyber Security Research Centre Ltd, Cyber Security Research Centre PhD Scholarship, 2020 ‑ 2024, $180,000.
  • CSCRC Sharing Cybersecurity Research Data SCReeD, Cyber Security Research Centre Ltd, Grant, 2023 ‑ 2024, $100,000.
  • Cybersecurity curriculum in WA primary and secondary schools, Cyber Security Research Centre Ltd, Grant, 2022 ‑ 2024, $170,210.
  • Honeypot Deployment Architecture, Cyber Security Research Centre Ltd, Cyber Security Research Centre Ltd, 2019 ‑ 2021, $130,000.

Research Student Supervision

Current Supervisions

Principal Supervisor

  • Doctor of Philosophy, Mapping Identified Incompleteness in Knowledge-Graph Representations to Missing Artefacts for Digital Forensic Investigations involving Data Breaches and Cyber-Intrusions

Completed Supervisions

Principal Supervisor

  • Master of Computing and Security by Research, Honeypot deployment architecture
  • Doctor of Philosophy, In-circuit forensic analysis of IoT memory modules
  • Master of Computing and Security by Research, A Forensic framework for Detecting Denial-of-Service Attacks in IoT Networks Using the MQTT Protocol

Associate Supervisor

  • Doctor of Philosophy, Cooperative co-evolution-based feature selection for big data analytics
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