The INRS-UQO Joint Research Unit (UMR) in Cybersecurity and Digital Trust unveils its scientific program

Interdisciplinary expertise to promote a safe and secure digital world.

From left to right : Zakaria Abou El Houda (INRS), Alain Davoust (UQO), Luc-Alain Giraldeau, directeur général de l’INRS, Murielle Laberge, rectrice de l’UQO, Anderson Avila (INRS), Raphaël Khoury,(UQO), Tiago Falk (INRS) et Stéphane Bouchard(UQO).

The INRS-UQO Joint Research Unit (UMR) Cybersecurity and Digital Trust officially launched its scientific program at an event held at Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO) this week. The announcement was made in the presence of UQO Rector Murielle Laberge, Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) Chief Executive Officer Luc-Alain Giraldeau, and some 50 faculty members, students, and partners gathered in Gatineau.

“At UQO, we’re passionate about all these fields of study, but what we’re particularly interested in these days is cybersecurity,” says the Rector. “The UMR INRS-UQO in Cybersecurity and Digital Trust aims to promote a safe and secure digital world. As the digital transformation of our activities progresses, cybersecurity is becoming more complex and more important than ever, touching on software, hardware, and human aspects. It aims not only to protect our data and digital assets, but also to ensure that our interactions in the digital world are secure and respect our privacy.”
Murielle Laberge, Rector of UQO

The research conducted within the UMR aims not only to protect our data and digital assets, but also to ensure that our interactions in the digital world are secure and respect our privacy.

“Cybersecurity is a crucial matter for Québec society, and the INRS-UQO UMR fulfills INRS’s mission by creating research projects on the topic that are useful for Québec’s economic, social, and cultural development. I’m delighted to see so much collaboration between professors and partners, because at INRS, research is highly partnership-based. It’s a model that works, and one we can be proud of.’’
Luc-Alain Giraldeau, Chief Executive Officer, INRS

The scientific program is structured around three components:

Component 1: Protection of digital assets and human factors

The main aim of this component is to defend IT systems against cyberattacks, in particular through automated intrusion and anomaly detection systems. In addition, UMR members are interested in the impact of human factors in cyber defence and incident response activities.

Component 2: Artificial intelligence and digital trust

This research area focuses on artificial intelligence as a field of application and a risk factor, and is aligned with the goal of digital trust, particularly in terms of trust in AI systems.

Component 3: Trust in the digital world

The main issue addressed here is trust in the entities we interact with in cyberspace: people and their avatars, the information they propagate online, and the platforms that enable virtual interactions.

Responding to societal issues

The event was an opportunity to discover some of the research projects carried out by members of the INRS-UQO UMR and their relevance to society. Notably, the risks of AI-fuelled misinformation and countermeasures for new immigrants to Québec, linguistic and AI perspectives for analyzing fake news writing styles associated with the defamation of politicians, human factors and their impact on biases in human-IA teamwork, and the use of quantum machine learning for the detection of attacks in critical infrastructures.

The INRS-UQO UMR was created in 2021 to develop a critical mass of research, as well as skilled workers to promote a safe and secure digital world. It is made up of six regular members, three of whom are affiliated with INRS and three with UQO:

Zakaria Abou El Houda, INRS. Professor of computer science, specializing in network security and artificial intelligence.

Anderson Avila, INRS. Professor of computer science, scientific director of the Cybersecurity and Information Integrity Laboratory (LACSII).

Stéphane Bouchard, UQO. Professor of psychology, focusing on cybersecurity issues involving mental health professionals, the impact of experiences in the metaverse, and access to information emanating from immersion in the metaverse.

Alan Davoust, UQO. Professor of computer science, specializing in artificial intelligence and the study of socio-technical systems.

Tiago Falk, INRS. Professor of computer science, scientific director of the Multisensory/Multimodal Signal Analysis and Enhancement Laboratory (MuSAE Lab).

Raphaël Khoury, UQO. Professor of computer science, specializing in software security.

Training and collaboration

The INRS-UQO UMR is also building its success on a new generation of students armed with the interdisciplinary expertise needed to tackle the technical, human, and societal problems of cybersecurity, which are making headlines in Québec and Canada. Since 2023, more than sixty students have been trained.

Research within the UMR also relies on a large network of collaborators, at UQO and INRS as well as throughout the region and in other countries. The UMR is particularly keen to develop synergies with UQO’s other cybersecurity research groups, whose research topics are complementary.

Five joint research units have been created by INRS and Université du Québec. In addition to UQO, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC), Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR), Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT), the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR) also have their own UMRs.

The INRS-UQO Joint Research Unit (UMR) in Cybersecurity and Digital Trust unveils its scientific program

Responding to societal issues

Training and collaboration

You may also like