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Research undertaken at Royal Holloway developed a theoretical Performance Audit (PA) model for evaluating the value for money (v-f-m) of the post-decision operational stage of Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs) and Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). Performance Audits (PAs) undertaken by national audit offices encountered difficulties in evaluating v-f-m, given their lifespan of 25 years or more. The model has impact in the UK and Australia, influencing national auditors in their development of PA of PPP/PFI, initially in the UK National Audit Office and directly during the REF 2014 period on the PAs in the Victorian Auditor General's Office (VAGO), Australia.
By default, Internet traffic is vulnerable to eavesdropping and modification. TLS is a protocol that has become the de facto method for securing application-layer messages. TLS is implemented in all major web browsers and servers and is used daily by hundreds of millions of people for applications such as e-commerce, social networking and Internet banking. Royal Holloway researchers identified flaws in the way in which TLS encrypts data, resulting in practical attacks that compromised the security goals of TLS. The researchers also helped major vendors, such as Google, Microsoft and Oracle, to assess and develop countermeasures to the attacks.
Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) is a very well known, international specification for secure mobile radio and `walkie-talkie' communication, that is extensively used and relied upon by emergency and public safety services such as police, ambulance and fire services, as well as governmental and private bodies. The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) began standardising TETRA in the 1990s and it is now widely used throughout the world. Foundations of its success include resilience and reliability, but security is a major feature, being underpinned by expert cryptographic design. In particular the authentication and key generation mechanisms in TETRA rely on a block cipher (HURDLE) which was designed by a team of cryptographers at Royal Holloway.
The work carried out at Royal Holloway underpins the integrity and security of TETRA safety- critical networks throughout the world to the present day. A secure design for emergency service communications minimises both the amount of disruption criminals can cause to service operations, and the amount of operational information such criminals can glean from eavesdropping, contributing to the safety and security of society as a whole as well as the economic benefits to manufacturers of TETRA-based equipment.
Mobile telecommunication networks serve nearly 7 billion users; over 90% of the world's population. The flexibility and pervasive nature of mobile networks underpin an enormous range of business and personal activities. Many systems are based on GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) standards for digital cellular networks that were created by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in the 1990s to replace analogue network standards. A key factor in the success of GSM has been the ability to authenticate legitimate users and to provide privacy for wireless transmissions. A strong authentication mechanism is critical for the economic operation of mobile telephony.
The security of GSM is based on a secret key, known only to the network operator and the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM), and an authentication algorithm implemented by the SIM and the network operator. A network operator may implement its own authentication algorithm, but many adopted the example implementation (known as COMP128, or COMP128-1) suggested by the GSM Association (GSMA). COMP128-1 was later found to be flawed. Cryptographers at Royal Holloway, at the request of GSMA, designed a replacement algorithm (COMP128-2), the example implementation offered by the GSM Association (GSMA) to over 800 Mobile Network Operators (MNO) in over 200 countries. The algorithm is still regarded as robust and it and derivative algorithms are relied upon by enormous numbers of users every day.
Collaborative research into sustainability management has led directly to enhanced embedding of sustainability considerations nationally and internationally in an individual company and professional organisations. The research has positively impacted the embedding of sustainability in decision-making within a supply chain of Sainsbury's. It has informed the practices and policies of professional accountancy bodies (such as ACCA for their small and medium sized accounting practitioner membership) and international bodies developing sustainability accounting guidelines (such as the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC)).The portfolio of research has led to the development of resources that have enhanced professional practice and understanding in decision-making and managing for sustainability.
Julian Johnson's work on the contemporary status and meaning of Viennese musical modernism and its relation to ideas of social modernity has had impact well beyond academia. Through broadcasts, public lectures, consultancies, essays, programme notes and web-based documentaries for international music festivals he has shaped the presentation of Mahler's music, and that of his contemporaries, for the general public. These activities, undertaken with institutions such as the BBC, the South Bank Centre, the Philharmonia Orchestra and Glyndebourne Opera, have made a long-standing, substantial and far-reaching contribution to public discourse around this repertoire, and to its heightened appreciation.
The Fault Dynamics Research Group (FDRG) have designed and executed analogue experiments to replicate the 3D/4D geometry of oil and gas exploration targets. The main beneficiaries are the international petroleum industry. The research is "pivotal to British Petroleum's subsurface developments" (R. Humphries BP 2012) in determining the number of multi-million pound wells required to access reserves. FDRG models "changed the way seismic data (was) interpreted" (Chief Scientist, Geoscience Australia 2012) in particular in the NW Australian frontier with "BP Exploration (Alpha)....work program(s) of $600 million" (Chief Scientist, Geoscience Australia 2012).
Research on the effect of television product placement on young UK viewers has contributed to a change in UK policy, in that the Labour government reversed its opposition to product placement, and Ofcom changed its regulations. The research also contributed to the wider public debate on the topic by presenting evidence to dispel some of the myths and misinformation around the effects of product placement. The topic remains live even though the argument in favour of paid-for placement was accepted by Ofcom in 2011. The market has not developed as the industry hoped and Royal Holloway researchers continue to contribute their expertise to the industry discussion.
This case study refers to the REF-period impact achieved by Michael J. Williams, who joined the Unit in 2008. His research comprises a number of projects that bring new understandings of risk to bear on the evolution and development of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) since 1949, the conceptualization of security in the post-9/11 world and NATO's role in promoting security in the transatlantic area via `out of area' missions such as the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Williams combined advisory roles and a strong public profile developed over the period to bring his research to politicians, policymakers and publics both nationally and internationally, engagements that supported the achievement of non-academic impacts of his work. His research has informed the thinking of policy-makers, military officials, international organizations and development actors dealing with security and development, contributed to policy formation at national and international levels, and raised public awareness of the difficulties of policy coordination in conflict and development initiatives.
Stephen Rose's research on the sources and contexts of German music 1500-1750 has benefited amateur musicians, professional musicians and commercial concert-life. Building on his research in early music-printing, his digitisation project Early Music Online has provided musicians worldwide with digitised copies of over 10,000 pieces of early printed music previously available only to researchers visiting the British Library. His research on the contexts of German music has influenced concert programming at the highest international level, enhancing public awareness of the cultural meanings of the music they hear, and introducing them to unfamiliar repertory that puts one of the giants of western music—J. S. Bach—in historical context.