British Telecommunications Public Limited Company

Daniel Bastos

Fadi El-Moussa

Behnam Azvine

The present disclosure relates to securing networks against attacks launched via connection of peripheral devices to networked devices. According to one aspect, there is provided a computer-implemented method of automatically updating a network security policy, the method comprising: running a machine learning algorithm to continuously update a plurality of weighting coefficients associated with a respective plurality of threat factors, the threat factors each having values defined for each of a plurality of requests for respective peripheral devices to connect to one or more networked devices which are communicably coupled to a secure network; and automatically updating a security policy associated with the secure network in respect of a particular threat factor when that threat factor's associated weighting coefficient changes by more than a predetermined amount in a predetermined period, wherein requests for peripheral devices to connect to the networked devices are automatically approved or denied in dependence on that policy.

Computer-implemented security methods and systems

Improvements to publish-subscribe protocols are provided, including a method for communicating data in a network comprising publisher devices, a broker and subscriber devices, comprising one of the publisher devices: i-a. receiving a public key from the broker; i-b. determining, based on one or more attributes of data to be published to the broker, whether a sensitivity level of the data is low; and ii. following completion of both of steps i-a and i-b, publishing the data to the broker, wherein: when step i-b results in a determination that the sensitivity level of the data is low, step ii comprises transmitting the data to the broker unencrypted; and when step i-b results in a determination that the sensitivity level of the data is not low, step ii comprises encrypting the data then transmitting resulting encrypted data to the broker, wherein the step of encrypting the data uses the public key.

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London, United Kingdom

Daniel Bastos