Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research - King's College London

King's College London (KCL) is a research-led university established in 1829 (4th oldest in England), and one of the top 25 universities in the world (2017-18 QS international world rankings). The current King's Strategic Vision 2029, which looks forward to KCL's 200th anniversary in 2029, leverages the breadth of expertise across KCL to promote multi- and inter-disciplinary research to enable transformative advances and produce new insights that can be applied rapidly to deliver impact across the world, with 4 overlapping themes, including social justice, which encompasses issues like justice, prevention, and cyber security.

In particular, KCL's cyber security vision for the next 5 years is to conduct high-quality, impactful, and inter-disciplinary research, particularly leveraging current cyber security capability but also nurturing and growing it, with the vision to becoming the ACE-CSR of note for 3 main research themes and their interrelationship:
* AI Cyber Security. This comprises both the use of AI for cyber security (including data-driven techniques such as Machine Learning, but also knowledge-based techniques such as Argumentation, Normative Systems, Trust), and the cyber security of AI itself (including security, trust, privacy and transparency guarantees).

* Formal Cyber Security. This includes the theoretical aspects of cyber security such as theoretical computer science approaches for verification and testing to provide assurance, correctness and technology-readiness of security protocols, mobile and web applications, cyber-physical systems and the Internet of Things.

* Strategic Cyber Security. This includes the socio-political and strategic aspects of cyber security such as cyber risks, cyber threats, cyber intelligence, cyber policy and cyber defence, and their relationship to risk assessment, management and governance.

These 3 themes reflect the key current cyber security strengths at KCL and the inter-disciplinary link to other key KCL strengths, notably AI, theoretical computer science, and conflict and security studies. Strategically, the themes are intertwined and complementary, and they are crucial to understanding and tackling the complex nature of evolving cyber security challenges. For instance, AI-powered cyber intelligence is becoming increasingly important for the strategy and defence of nation-states, and it lies at the intersection of AI Cyber Security and Strategic Cyber Security; likewise, the security guarantees that are needed for AI and Autonomous Systems, which formal verification can bring, lie at the intersection of AI Cyber Security and Formal Cyber Security.

Our impact strategy has been planned with a view to maximising four key impact objectives: (i) engaging with key UK cyber security government agencies; (ii) engaging with the cyber security industry; (iii) engaging with other ACE-CSR; (iv) promoting and publicising the KCL ACE-CSR. To achieve these objectives, a number of activities have been planned, which are described below, including travel to ACE-CSR conferences and meetings with NCSC; events and workshops with industry, government, and other ACE-CSR; development and maintenance of an KCL ACE-CSR website; and design and production of publicity materials for the KCL ACE-CSR. Here, we only describe the strategy and its activities.