Victims' journeys resulting from cybercrime incidents

The number of victims of traditional crime. When describing being a victim of online crime, people outline the steps they have taken immediately after the crime has taken place. The sentiments they attach to their experiences of becoming a victim, reflect how they felt at the time of being asked about the incident - and not at the time that it happened. Moreover, the journeys taken by the victims to regain or restore their data security is rarely explored in existing studies.
My thesis aims to close this gap by exploring what it means to be a victim of cyber crime in the short-, medium- and long-term, focussing on the victims' journeys. Framed within information security and criminology bodies of literature and building on an initial exploratory study into social media and bank account compromise, the proposed methodology includes co-producing knowledge with victims of online crime. The aim is to map their journeys after becoming victims, and is particularly pertinent given the findings from an initial study concluded that such incidents are rarely reported, and victims are unaware of where to look for advice. The likely contributions of this research are that by understanding the journey taken by victims of cyber crime, better prevention and support mechanisms can be designed.

The most significant impact of the renewal of Royal Holloway's CDT in Cyber Security will be the production of at least 30 further PhD-level graduates. In view of the strong industry involvement in both the taught and research elements of the programme, CDT graduates are "industry-ready": through industry placements, they have exposure to real-world cyber security problems and working environments; because of the breadth of our taught programme, they gain exposure to cyber security in all its forms; through involvement of our industrial partners at all stages of the programme, the students are regularly exposed to the language and culture of industry. At the same time, they will continue to benefit from generic skills training, equipping them with a broad set of skills that will be of use in their subsequent workplaces (whether in academia, industry or government). They will also engage in PhD-level research projects that will lead to them developing deep topic-specific knowledge as well as general analytical skills.

One of the longer-term impacts of CDT research, expressed directly through research outputs, is to provide mechanisms that help to enhance confidence and trust in the on-line society for ordinary citizens, leading in turn to quality of life enhancement. CDT research has the potential of directly impacting the security of deployed system, for example helping to make the Internet a more secure place to do business. Moreover the work on the socio-technical dimensions of security and privacy also gives us the means to influence government policy to the betterment of society at large. Through the training component of the CDT, and subsequent engagement with industry, our PhD students are exposed to the widest set of cyber security issues and forced to think beyond the technical boundaries of their research. In this way, our CDT is training a generation of cyber security researchers who are equipped - philosophically as well as technically - to cope with whatever cyber security threats the future may bring. The programme equip students with skills that will enable them to understand, represent and solve complex engineering questions, skills that will have an impact in UK industry and academic long beyond the lifetime of the CDT.