Dr. Umara Zahid Ph.D. (Information Technology) Lecturer Department of Software Engineering International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan Email: [email protected] Contact No: 0092-51-9019824 Google Scholar Link:  https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=FN91_toAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

Research Interests

Cyber Security, Computer and Network Security, Cyber Threat Intelligence and Information Sharing, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Deep Web Mining, and Analysis 

Ph.D. Thesis

Title: A Data-Driven Approach to Automated Analysis of Cyber Threat Intelligence

PhD research work was conducted with Dr. Zahid Anwar (North Dakota State University, USA), and Dr. Jörn Altmann (Technology Management, Economics, and Policy Program, College of Engineering, Seoul National University, South Korea).

Education

Professional Certifications 

1. Google Cyber Security Professional – Coursera

2. IBM Machine Learning Professional – Coursera

3. Introduction to Large Language Models – Coursera

4. Mathematics for Machine Learning and Data Science – DeepLearning.AI

Work Experience (17 years +)

·       2013-till date: Lecturer, Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Computing and Information Technology, International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan.

Subjects Taught

Under Graduate: Network Security, Cyber Security, Information Security, Probability and Statistics, Operating Systems, Data Communication, Computer Communication, and Networks, Advance Computer Programming (JAVA), Digital Logic Design, Introduction to Computing, Information Technology Infrastructure

Post Graduate (Master): Network Security, Machine Learning, Research Methods, Advanced Computer Architecture, Advanced Data Mining

Post Graduate (Ph.D.): Special Topics in Communication & Networks, Special Topics in Machine Learning

·       2009-2012: Research Associate, Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan.

Subjects Taught: Data Communication, Computer Communication, and Networks, Advance Computer Programming (JAVA), Digital Logic Design, Introduction to Computing

·       2006-2007: Visiting Lecturer at Frontier Education Foundation, Degree College for Girls, Hayatabad, Pakistan

Subjects Taught: Information Technology Basics, Computer Networks, Programming Fundamentals, Object Oriented Paradigm, Operating System, and Database Systems

Journal Publications

Umara Noor, Zahid Anwar, Asad Waqar Malik, Sharifullah Khan, Shahzad Saleem, “A machine learning framework for investigating data breaches based on semantic analysis of adversary’s attack patterns in threat intelligence repositories.” In Elsevier Future Generation Computer Systems IF: 5.7. (2019)

Umara Noor, Zahid Anwar, Tehmina Amjad, Kim Kwang Raymond Choo, “A machine learning-based FinTech cyber threat attribution framework using high-level indicators of compromise.” In Elsevier Future Generation Computer Systems IF: 5.7. (2019)

Umara Noor, Zahid Anwar, Jörn Altmann, Zahid Rashid “Customer-oriented ranking of cyber threat intelligence service providers.” In Elsevier Electronic Commerce Research and Applications IF: 4.3. (2020)

Zahid Rashid, Umara Noor, Jörn Altmann “Economic model for evaluating the value creation through information sharing within the cybersecurity information sharing ecosystem”. In Elsevier Future Generation Computer Systems IF: 7.3. (2021)

Sarwat Ejaz, Umara Noor, Zahid Rashid, “Visualizing Interesting Patterns in Cyber Threat Intelligence Using Machine Learning Techniques” In Cybernetics and Information Technologies. (2022)

Tayyaba Rasool., Siddiqa Javaid, Umara Noor, Salma Imtiaz, Zahid Rashid. The Role of Machine Learning Techniques and Internet of Things Devices in COVID-19 Detection: A Mapping Study. Technical Journal, 28(04),17-26. (2023)

Memoona Sadaf, Zafar Iqbal, Zahid Anwar, Umara Noor, Mohammad Imran, Thippa Reddy Gadekallu, “A Novel Framework for Detection and Prevention of Denial of Service Attacks on Autonomous Vehicles using Fuzzy Logic” In Elsevier Vehicular Communications, 100741, ISSN 2214-2096, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vehcom.2024.100741. IF: 6.7 (2024)

Rimsha Kanwal, Umara Noor, Zahid Rashid, “Enhancing Smart Cities Through Real-Time Insights and Safety: A Comparative Study of Supervised Machine Learning Algorithms for Anomaly Detection in Emerging Urban Landscapes” In Technical Journal 29 (01) (2024)

 Conference Publications

Rimsha Kanwal, Rimsha Kanwal, Umara Noor, Zahid Rashid, “A Hybrid Learning Approach for Automatic Data Labelling and Anomaly Detection in IoT Networks”, In 3rd International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ICAI), Islamabad, Pakistan, 2023, pp. 238-241, DOI: 10.1109/ICAI58407.2023.10136687.

Umara Noor, Zahid Anwar, Zahid Rashid, “An Association Rule Mining-Based Framework for Profiling Regularities in Tactics Techniques and Procedures of Cyber Threat Actors”, In International Conference on Smart Computing and Electronic Enterprise, (IEEE ICSCEE), July 11-12, 2018, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (DOI: 10.1109/ICSCEE.2018.8538379)

Zahid Rashid, Umara Noor, Jörn
Altmann, “Network Externalities in Cybersecurity Information Sharing Ecosystems” In 15th International Conference on Economics of Grids, Clouds, Systems, and Services GECON 2018, Springer LNCS, September 18-20, Pisa, Italy (DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13342-9_10)

 Umara Noor, Zahid Rashid, “Secure Semantic Web Application Development: Present and Future”, In 15th International Conference on Distributed Computing and Applications to Business, Engineering and Science (IEEE-DCABES 2016), August 24-26, 2016 – Paris, France (DOI: 10.1109/CSE-EUC-DCABES.2016.263) 

Umara Noor, Anila Ghazanfar, “A Survey Revealing Path towards Service Life Cycle Management in COBIT 5”, In 11th International Conference on Digital  Information Management (IEEE-ICDIM) September 19-21, 2016- Porto, Portugal (DOI: 10.1109/ICDIM.2016.7829754)

Umara Noor, Zahid Anwar, Yasir Mehmood, Waseem Aslam, “TrustBook: Web of Trust Based Relationship Establishment in Online Social Networks”, In 11^th International Conference on Frontiers of Information Technology (IEEE-FIT) December 16-18, 2013, Islamabad, Pakistan (DOI: 10.1109/FIT.2013.48)

Umara Noor, Ali Daud, Ayesha Manzoor, “Latent Dirichlet Allocation Based Semantic Clustering of Heterogeneous Deep Web Sources” In 5th International Conference on Intelligent Networking and Collaborative Systems (IEEE-INCoS) , September 9-11, 2013, Xi’an city, Shaanxi province, China
(DOI: 10.1109/INCoS.2013.28)

Umara Noor, Zahid Rashid, Azhar Rauf: “TODWEB: training-less ontology based deep web source classification”, In 13th International Conference on Information Integration and Web-based Applications and Services (ACM-iiWAS), December 5-7, 2011, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (DOI: 10.1145/2095536.2095569)

Umara Noor, Zahid Rashid, Azhar Rauf: “Semantic Web Application: An Intelligent Metasearch Engine Paradigm for Semantic Information Retrieval on the Web” In 2nd International Conference on Intelligence and Information Technology, IEEE, Lahore, Pakistan, October 2010

Umara Noor, Zahid Rashid, Azhar Rauf: “A Survey of automatic Deep Web Classification Techniques” In 2nd International Conference on Intelligence and Information Technology, IEEE, Lahore, Pakistan, October 2010

Technical Papers/ Pre-Prints

Khadija Manzoor, Umara Noor, Zahid Rashid: “NFT-Based Blockchain-Oriented Security Framework for Metaverse Applications” http://arxiv.org/abs/2307.10342 (2023)

Umara Noor, Sawera Shahid, Rimsha Kanwal, Zahid Rashid: “A Machine Learning based Empirical Evaluation of Cyber Threat Actors High Level Attack Patterns over Low level Attack Patterns in Attributing Attacks” https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2307.10252 (2023)

Journal Paper Reviewer

IEEE Access

Computers & Security, Elsevier

International Journal of Intelligent Systems, Wiley Online Library

ACM Digital Threats: Research and Practice

Conference Paper Reviewer

18^th International conference on the economics of grids, clouds, systems and services (GECON), September 2021

International Conference on Computer Science and Information Technology (ICCSIT) 2011

20th International Conference on Frontiers of Information Technology (FIT’23), 11-12 December 2023

Conference Program Committee Member

18th International conference on the economics of grids, clouds, systems and services (GECON), September 2021

20th International Conference on Frontiers of Information Technology (FIT’23), 11-12 December 2023

6th International Conference on Emerging Networks Technologies (ICENT) Hanoi, Vietnam (November 1-3, 2024). 

 

PhD Students under Supervision

 

Maryam Amin PhDCS F22 “Safety Prediction in Air Traffic Control System, A Machine Learning based Approach.”

Khadija Bibi PhDCS F22 “Blockchain-based Approach for Enhancing Privacy, Accuracy, Efficiency, and Processing Speed in IoT Data Analytics”

 

Masters Students Supervised

Sawera Shahid MSCS F21 “An Unsupervised Learning Approach For A Reliable Profiling Of Cyber Threat Actors Reported Globally Based On Complete Contextual Information Of Cyber-Attacks.”

Rimsha Kanwal MSCS F20 “An Approach for the Retrieval of Attack Patterns from Unstructured Cyber Threat Intelligence Repositories”

Rimsha Kanwal MSCS F20 “An effective approach for anomaly detection in future smart cities”

Ayesha Manzoor MSCS F09 “Semantically Mining Heterogeneous Data Sources of Deep Web”

Iqra Bashir MSCS S13 “Access Control Policy for VOIP as a secure service in cloud environment”

Naveed Mumtaz MSCS F14 “Classifying Cyber Threat Intelligence Data to analyze Malware Information”

Sarwat Ejaz MSCS F14 “Visualization Interesting Patterns in Cyber Threat Feeds Using Rule Base Classification and Regular Expression”

Fizza Khurshid MSCS F21 “An Automated Cyber Threat Mitigation Framework For Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks In Fog Computing”

Manahil Fatima MSCS F21 “A Reliable Cyber Threat Investigation Framework For Timely Detection And Mitigation Of Data Breaches.”

Masters Students under Supervision

Inbasat Fiza MSCS F21 “Forecasting Cyber Attacks Using Reinforcement Learning Model Optimized Based on Ensemble of Deep Neural Networks”

External Reviewer in Universities

Department of Cyber Security, Air University,Islamabad

Technical Skills

Information/ Cyber Security	Kali Linux, Metasploit, hping3, Ettercap, THC Hydra, Crypt tool 2, PGP Tool, Open PGP, Zero knowledge proof, Blockchaintechnology Reconnaissance and Foot printing NSlookup, Tracert, WHOIS Lookup, ip2location, American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), wayback machine, Google Hacking (allinurl:tsweb/default.htm) Scanning and Enumeration Ping Sweep, SYN stealth scan, UDP Scanning, Nmap, Zenmap,theHarvester Firewall IDS Configuration Snort, Suricata,Windows Firewall Configuration, Windows event viewer Web Application Attacks OWASP Webgoat (SQL injection, Cross site scripting)
Cyber Threat Intelligence	Splunk, STIX, MAEC, STIXViz, ThreatConnect, OpenIOC, YARA, ATT&CK MITRE, IBM Threat Exchange, VERIS Verizon
Vulnerability assessment and Exploitation	Nessus vulnerability scanner, Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE), Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS), National Vulnerability Database (NVD), Rapid7 Metasploitable Virtual Machine, Port 21 vsftpd,vsftpd_234_backdoor,Port 23 telnet, Port 445 samba,
Artificial Intelligence	Python Libraries NumPy, Pandas, Matplotlib, Scikit Learn, Seaborn, Beautifulsoup, Theano, TensorFlow, Keras, Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK), SciPy, Keras Elasticsearch Apache Lucene (search engine software library), Rapid miner, Weka, IBM SPSS, Agena Risk, Super Decisions, Synthesia
Programming	C/C++, Java, Python, Lisp, Prolog, Matlab, Fortran, Assembly language, HTML5, Javascript, Json, XML
Database Management Systems	Oracle, Microsoft Access, MySQL
Networking	Packet Tracer, Wireshark packet analyzer (IP, TCP, UDP, HTTP, FTP, Telnet, DNS, SMTP, POP3, SSL, SSH, IPSec), Network Simulator (NS), Mininet, NetSim
Graphical Tools	Microsoft Visio, Gimp
Operating Systems	Microsoft Windows, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Fedora, Kali Linux
Metaverse Technology	Shopify (E-commerce platform in metaverse) Gather.town (a virtual space platform that offers a new way of conducting online meetings, events, and conferences) Matterport (Real estate in metaverse) Epic Metahumans (Digital human/ avatar creation) Fable VirtualBeings (Digital human/ avatar creation) AIDungeon (single-player/multiplayer AI based text adventure game) Promethean AI (AI based virtual world creation)

 

Administrative Duties in University

References

Dr. Zahid Anwar

Associate Professor

North Dakota State University, USA

Email: [email protected]

Dr. Jörn Altmann

Professor

Technology Management, Economics, and Policy, College of Engineering, Seoul National University, South Korea,

Email: [email protected]