Orvila Sarker

Orvila Sarker

School of Computer and Mathematical Sciences

Faculty of Sciences, Engineering and Technology

I have completed my PhD from the School of Computer and Mathematical Sciences, The University of Adelaide, Australia. My PhD research focuses on supporting anti-phishing tool developers and cyber security practitioners in addressing human-centric and usability issues by identifying the challenges in anti-phishing tools and interventions.

During my PhD, I have gathered experience in conducting systematic literature reviews, applying qualitative and quantitative research methods such as thematic analysis and grounded theory, conducting semi-structured interviews, and applying Reinforcement Learning/Natural Language Processing techniques in solving cyber security issues and designing user-friendly tools.

My Multivocal Literature Review on the challenges and critical success factors in the anti-phishing intervention has been recently published by the Journal of Systems and Software (CORE rank A). To assist the developers and practitioners in better designing, implementing, and evaluating the anti-phishing interventions, I have identified 22 human-centric issues in 14 different types of anti-phishing interventions and devised 41 personalized guidelines to mitigate these issues. This work has been published at the 17th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) 2023 (CORE rank A). Additionally, I have conducted 18 semi-structured interviews with anti-phishing software developers and cyber security practitioners. This study reports anti-phishing practices in organizations, 8 challenges, and requirements in the anti-phishing interventions, extracts features for an envisioned tool, and provides 15 recommendations to improve the current anti-phishing defense in organizations. This interview study has been under review at the Journal of Systems and Software (CORE rank A).

At the beginning of my PhD, I worked on designing solutions for establishing secure communications among the network nodes in the Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET). This study has been published at the 22nd IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security, and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom 2023) (CORE rank B). In this work, we proposed a Reinforcement Learning algorithm to prevent four types of cyber attacks.

During my employment at The University of Adelaide as a Research Assistant, I worked on two different studies. The first study focused on developing a Natural Language Processing (NLP) tool prototype aimed at aiding cybersecurity practitioners in designing more effective anti-phishing tools and interventions. This project involved cleaning and summarizing literature data using various prompt engineering techniques and Large Language Models (LLMs), followed by training different NLP models with the curated dataset to achieve the desired outcomes. The second study, still in progress, identifies 15 factors that influence the employment success of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) within the software industry, specifically in the realms of software engineering education, career training programs, and programming tools and assistive technologies.

  • Journals
    Year Citation
    2024 Sarker, O., Jayatilaka, A., Haggag, S., Liu, C., & Babar, M. A. (2024). A Multi-vocal Literature Review on challenges and critical success factors of phishing education, training and awareness. Journal of Systems and Software, 208, 25 pages.
    DOI Scopus4

  • Conference Papers
    Year Citation
    2024 Sarker, O., Shen, H., & Babar, M. A. (2024). Reinforcement Learning Based Neighbour Selection for VANET with Adaptive Trust Management. In Proceedings - 2023 IEEE 22nd International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications, TrustCom/BigDataSE/CSE/EUC/iSCI 2023 Vol. 99 (pp. 585-594). Exeter, United Kingdom: IEEE.
    DOI
    2023 Sarker, O., Haggag, S., Jayatilaka, A., & Liu, C. (2023). Personalized Guidelines for Design, Implementation and Evaluation of Anti-Phishing Interventions.. In ESEM (pp. 1-12). Online: IEEE.
    DOI
    2019 Dey, R. C., & Sarker, O. (2019). Sentiment analysis on bengali text using lexicon based approach. In 2019 22nd International Conference on Computer and Information Technology, ICCIT 2019. IEEE.
    DOI Scopus5
    2018 Sarker, O., Hasan, M., & Istiak Chowdhury, N. M. (2018). A Secure Web Server for E- Banking. In 2018 21st International Conference of Computer and Information Technology (ICCIT) (pp. 1-5). IEEE.
    DOI
    2018 Hasan, M. K., Majumder, M. M. R., Sarker, O., & Matin, A. (2018). Local Contrast Based Thresholding for Document Binarization. In 2018 4th International Conference on Electrical Engineering and Information & Communication Technology (iCEEiCT) Vol. 19 (pp. 204-209). IEEE.
    DOI

Research Grants

  • Project title: Design and performance analysis of finite impulse response lowpass filter using window method. Grant provider: University Grant Commission (UGC), Bangladesh. Year: 2017-2018.
  • Project title: Design and development of a secure web server. Grant provider: University Grant Commission (UGC), Bangladesh. Year: 2018-2019.

Semester 2, 2024

  • COMP SCI 1013 - Introduction to Computer Systems, Networks, and Security - School of Computer and Mathematical Sciences, The University of Adelaide, Australia
  • COMP SCI 7007 - Specialized Programming - School of Computer and Mathematical Sciences, The University of Adelaide, Australia
  • COMP SCI 4812 - Secure Software Engineering - School of Computer and Mathematical Sciences, The University of Adelaide, Australia

Trimester 3, 2024

  • COMP SCI 4812 - Secure Software Engineering - School of Computer and Mathematical Sciences, The University of Adelaide, Australia

  • Other Supervision Activities
    Date Role Research Topic Location Program Supervision Type Student Load Student Name
    2024 - 2024 Co-Supervisor PhishGuide: An Anti-phishing Training Knowledge Base System for Cybersecurity Practitioners The University of Adelaide - Honours - Yen-Shuen (Jason) Huang
    2024 - 2024 Co-Supervisor PhishGuide: An Anti-phishing Training Knowledge Base System for Cybersecurity Practitioners The University of Adelaide - Master - Dominico Tran-Nguyen
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External Profiles