Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research - Newcastle University

Following the insight that cyber security does not only come from protecting critical infrastructures, the Centre for Cybercrime and Computer Security at Newcastle University (referred to as Cybercrime Centre in what follows, http://cccs.ncl.ac.uk) complements core security research - such as cryptography, secure system engineering, information and operational assurance techniques, quantitative security - with initiatives to protect and support stakeholders (victims and investigators) and a strong focus on science and human factors of cyber security.

This insight shapes up the key strategic aim of Newcastle University's ACE-CSR, which is to improve and expand the relationships between private and public sector parties in cyber security for a joint push towards Protecting Society's Fabric. To achieve this, the ACE-CSR will execute the following operational plan to be able to benefit from the ACE-CSR status:
- We will involve cyber security professionals in the advisory board, expanding the current board of the Cybercrime Centre, to help gain insight in the problem domain and steer our research.
- We will invite guest colloquium speakers for colloquium series at various Schools in Newcastle, from the area of cyber security, to educate and inspire researchers. Furthermore, we plan to invite international researchers to share their expertise and to provide keynote speech at some of our events.
- We will expand our initiative to have collaborations with cyber security partners through smaller projects such as MSc Summer projects, utilising our thriving advanced MSc in Security and Resilience and PhD interruptions of study.

We will do this by building a world-leading multidisciplinary research team with expertise in security, privacy and trust and leveraging the work already undertaken through on-going initiatives including the Cybercrime Centre, the Digital Institute and the RCUK funded Digital Economy Hub on Social Inclusion (SiDE) - which will enable the proposed ACE to address a new focus area related to "Protecting Society's Fabric".

We envisage potential impact of this work on various beneficiaries: end users (including business and public sector); as well as interdisciplinary academic researchers in computer security in general, and cyber security in particular.

Public Engagement:
The main interaction with potential end users will be carried out through annual targeted events, addressing the three main strands of our research as stated in the work plan. Where appropriate, other public events will be organised to gather ideas and challenges that people face in dealing with cyber security, and to disseminate results and findings from our research further.

Training:
The Cybercrime Centre runs master classes and training workshops led by Phil Butler, such as the ones organised in collaboration with the North East Fraud Forum. On top of that, the School of Computing Science at Newcastle University offers an MSc and a BSc program on Computer Security and Resilience; modules of which are taught by members of the Cybercrime Centre. We will leverage these existing capabilities in ensuring the ACE-CSR's impact through training.

Academic Impact:
Our main academic contribution is the opening of dialogue between various disciplines, facilitating a more inclusive perspective of cyber security, the impact of cybercrime and ways to tackle it, from a wide range of fields such as computing science, electronic engineering, sociology, psychology, economy and law. In particular, we will focus on the main strands of the ACE-CSR, namely protection of critical infrastructures, human factors and science of cyber security, as well as usable and experience-centred security. We intend to disseminate our approach, methodologies and developed solutions/systems through an open source and open data approach, allowing other researchers (both in academia and industry) to build on our work, or even collaborate together in order to exploit the contribution of the ACE-CSR further.

National and International Collaborations:
The ACE-CSR will pursue collaborations and consulting opportunities with organisations on a national level, such as law enforcement agencies, SMEs and victim support organisations, ensuring a knowledge transfer to these organisations as well as obtaining problem statements that impact practice. In addition, the ACE-CSR will continue to establish relationships with global companies active in cyber security. Such relationships range from placements and consulting to project collaborations and memberships on external advisory boards.

Impact on Policy:
The ACE-CSR will engage in consulting UK policy makers, in particular as the coordinator of the UK Cybercrime Network (EPSRC EP/K003410/1). We will also endeavour to influence cyber security policies in the EU, through lobbying and extended networking activities with appropriate EU-funded projects, clusters, and agencies. We will achieve this impact by active participation in forums, such as the EU Cyber Security and Privacy Forum.