Upcoming Events

Midlands Cyber's 'FinTech Secured' event aims to showcase the work of leading stakeholders in the research and development of Fintech and Financial Security. Don’t miss your opportunity to be a part of the conversation and join Birmingham’s most exclusive financial tech and security event.

FinTech’s Academic innovators, CEOS’s and company founders, entrepreneurs, Contractors, Investors and policy-makers are encouraged to register now for the clusters second flagship event of 2022! Join us on the 7th June to discuss, participate, network and put your questions to our panel of industry experts.

Midlands Cyber Cluster are pleased to bring this opportunity to the heart of the UK's second city and to the concentrated fintech R&D base in Birmingham City Centre, take a Look at our fantastic city center venue below!

OUR EXPERT SPEAKERS

Tom Chothia - Reader in cyber security at the University of Birmingham

Why I can take £1000 from a locked iPhone’- the dangers of feature creep in contactless EMV and the need for formal verification.

Abstract : Contactless EMV has many complex features, such as device authentication for high value transactions and "transport mode" that makes paying on the underground convenient. In this talk I'll describe my group's work on investigating these features using formal verification. We find minor flaws in iPhones and in Visa’s network, which on their own would not be a major issue but when combined they make it possible to bypass all security and anti-fraud checks and make a payment for any value from a locked phone. While reported over a year ago, neither Apple nor Visa have fixed this issue, so it remains possible to take any amount of money from a locked iPhone with a Visa card in transit mode.

This work has received extensive news coverage including articles from the BBC, Times and Telegraph.

Bio: Dr Tom Chothia is a Reader in cyber security at the University of Birmingham. His work focuses on the development of formal and automated methods and their application to find major vulnerabilities in real world systems. He runs research projects on the security of financial systems, industrial control systems, IoT devices and backdoor detection in firmware. His work on EMV security, banking apps and pacemaker security have all received extensive media coverage.

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Vladlina Benson - Cyber Security thought leader, internationally recognised cyber specialist.

Cryptocurrency Market Trends: Illicit Money Flows and Fintech Security.

Summary: According to the UN, every year around $800 billion to $2 trillion are laundered. While criminals are trying to find more sophisticated ways to hide illicit money by exploiting the weaknesses within the FinTech sector, financial market participants strive to tackle financial crime by investing huge resources into new compliance technologies. Crypto asset market has emerged as an enabler of FinTech innovation, while challenged by adversaries. The presentation explores the technologies behind securing the UK FinTech sector.

Professor Vladlena Benson –Director of Aston University’s Cyber Security Innovation Centre. Member of the UK Cyber Security Council Professionalism working group, she is also serving on the EU’s Agency for Cybersecurity task force defining the Cybersecurity Skills Framework at the EU level. Her research on illicit money flows, AML, cryptocurrency forensics and secure by design FinTech, is supported by Horizon Europe, ESRC, InnovateUK exceeding 10M. Vladlena serves on the Board of ISACA Central UK and her work on diversity in cybersecurity workforce is recognised by multiple awards

ADDITIONAL SPEAKERS TO BE ANNOUNCED!

Take a Look at our fantastic city center venue 'The Compound, Birmingham'

REGISTER NOW!