Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research - De Montfort University

The ACE-CSR will recognise a hub of proven industrially relevant research in critical systems, sociotechnical security, and incident response, supported by a mixed portfolio of funding of over £1.5M per year.

The ACE-CSR at De Montfort University will be centred around the Cyber Technology Institute (CTI) with its long-standing record of world-leading cyber-security research within the School of Computer Science and Informatics (SCSI), with additional cross-disciplinary expertise from across the University from areas such as cyber psychology, economics and cyber ethics.

As an ACE we will further increase our collaborative research with nationally and internationally leading partners through networks such as TIPS2, RITICS and RISCS as well as international collaborations with our German, Austrian, and Greek partner institutions with focus on Security of Cyber Physical Systems and Transport. This will add additional value to the network of ACEs through our significant international outreach to both academia and industry.

The Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research, De Montfort University, is expected to have societal and economic impact that extends from the current impact of Cyber Security research and its allied activities.

- Economic impact. Cyber security is essential for all modern economic activity, not just electronic commerce, but most others which will end up relying on internet communication and web services in some way. The research of the Centre will provide processes, methods, and tools that organisations can use to improve their cyber security state and posture.

This kind of impact is achieved in the first place in direct ways through contacts with industrial and governmental organisations. The deepest such connection is through the CTI's Industrial Advisory Group of Airbus, BT, Deloitte UK and Rolls-Royce, and other direct industrial and governmental collaborators. This may be through joint research projects (e.g. KTPs such as the one with Airbus), or consultancy, for which we have established partnerships in industry (ICS) and government. In addition, many of our PhD students are part-time, working in industry or government, so will achieve direct impact in their workplaces. In some cases, such as the ACTIVE InnovateUK project, the industrial impact may be at DMU itself via a spin-off company.

Impact is also achieved in a number of indirect ways. One is through research-led teaching. Much of our MSc teaching is as CPD to industry and government based professionals. Many of our undergraduate students go on industrial placements, and 1st year BSc Cyber Security students have been assigned industrial mentors. We provide apprenticeship education in a number of schemes. All of these mean that our research-led teaching reaches industrialists.

Another secondary way is through the traditional as well as non-traditional methods of achieving academic impact. These include published research papers, keynotes and panels, as well as social media and WWW publication, and open source distribution for software and research data. Our annual #DMUCyberWeek event brings in many external organisations.

- Societal impact. Security and privacy for all systems and communications is essential for governmental and other societal activity in much the same way as it is for economic activity. The methods for achieving this kind of impact are essentially the same as above for economic impact. In addition, we have strong public engagement. In particular Boiten, Flick, and Hadlington have strong presences in the media, with Hadlington having appeared on the UK One Show, Boiten on ABC News Australia, all of them and also Janicke with recent pieces on The Conversation which have reached wide audiences including through republication in national newspapers. These and other members of the centre appear on BBC Radio Leicester to comment on cyber security issues very regularly (over 20 times in 2018). The continuation of all this is actively pursued and supported by the University's Communications team.
We also participate in local community engaging events, such as the Leicester Business Fair, and our own "Cyber Wednesday" evening events where we covered topics such as online safety, privacy, and GDPR for a broad local external audience.