A galaxy of focused Research Projects, aimed at aiding and improving Technology Absorption in the Indian Banking and Financial Sector form the crust of the Research Activities of the Institute. These projects, which include long term basic, developmental, application-oriented and industry-oriented research projects, are undertaken by our Faculty Members, who are assisted by Research Associates.

The students of the M.Tech in Information Technology (with specialization in Banking Technology and Information Security) engage themselves in student projects. A year-long project is a compulsory requirement for the successful completion of the course.

Under the aegis of the collaboration with the IIT, Kanpur, the Institute has started work on the following two collaborative research projects.

• A Decision Support Tool for Demand Forecasting for ATMs:
  A bank's treasurer is responsible for cash management. The bank needs to advance money as part of liquidity management to fill ATMs. The bank needs to be able to reasonably predict the cash requirements of an ATM. The bank incurs penalty if the demand is higher - then customers face inconvenience. If the demand is lower, the bank loses interest on the cash which otherwise could have earned interest. Therefore to decide the optimum amount of money that needs to be filled in an ATM in the context of uncertain demand (due to holidays, weekends, festivals, salary days etc.), the banker requires a decision support system that forecasts probabilistic demand. Stochastic programming techniques can be used to predict demand based on discrete probability distributions obtained from historical data.
• Automatic Detection of Security Vulnerabilities in Software Applications using Static Analysis:
  Objectives: This project is aimed at developing methods for Automatic Detection of Security Vulnerabilities in Software Applications using Static Analysis.
  Methodology: Study of various security vulnerabilities that are due to programming errors. Most security attacks, exploited well known classes of implementation flaws. Many of these flaws can be detected and eliminated before software is deployed. These can be classified as: Buffer Overflow, Tainted input vulnerability, Format string vulnerability, Vulnerabilities due to race conditions etc.

• Deliverables: A methodology of detecting security vulnerabilities based on Static Analysis and a POC based on that proposed methodology would be delivered in a year. POC will be applied against banks software.

• Secure Mobile Payments with open SSL and Wireless PKI certificate validation process
  The project will focus on the following aspects: (i) End to end security using OpenSSL and Wireless PKI thereby ensuring authentication, integrity, confidentiality and non-repudiation of transactions, (ii) Optimized protocols for the certificate management and verification between mobile phone and bank server, (iii) Implementation of WPKI with the enhanced certificate management protocol on UICC as certificate storage enabler, (iv) Design of a light weight secure mobile payment protocol using OpenSSL, (v) Creation of Mobile Payment Application (Applets) on UICC, Generation and Verification of Digital Signature on UICC and Certificate Validation etc. (vi) During the project, one or more of the following tools will be used: J2ME, J2EE, Bouncy Castle API, Java Card API, SIM Alliance CAT Loader, Eclipse SDK and JCOP (Java Card Open Platform).
• Mobile wallets with proximity payments using Near Field Communication (NFC)
  The project will focus on Near Field Communication (NFC) which is a set of short range wireless technologies that can be used in mobile payments. Mobile NFC services lead to transforming mobile phones into contactless devices for touch and go applications such as payments, ticketing, etc. NFC is an evolution of the simple RFID technology employed in "contactless" payment systems such as MasterCard PayPass and Visa payWave. It's also similar to (and compatible with) the FeliCa system used widely in Asia for mobile payments and ticketing systems. The project will focus on the following aspects: (i) The study of Near Field Communication (NFC) standard and its comparison with other proximity communication standards like Zigbee, Bluetooth, IrDA, WiFi, etcetera. (ii) The study of Mobile Wallet accommodating various e-payment cards and instruments, (iii) Design of Mobile wallet application and interfaces for proximity payments under varied conditions using UML, (iv) Simulation and implementation of the protocols developed along with transaction process using Java/J2ME etcetera.