Cyber Security

Cybersecurity threats are the source of many broad challenges for academic research. The layered, composite nature of today’s cyber systems means that cyber security research challenges tend to be rapidly evolving and that they add to or modify, rather than replace existing issues. They require new approaches, insights and techniques, for example those leveraging the power of data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence. These new techniques can build on and work alongside continuing activity in more established areas such as cryptography, computational privacy, confidential computing, formal methods, software testing, malware analysis and intrusion detection. Areas that may not traditionally have been considered to be enablers of better cybersecurity, such as behavioural science and economics, continue to assume an increasingly important role in the field. 

Imperial has been recognised by EPSRC and the National Cyber Security Centre as an Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research (ACE-CSR) continuously since the scheme was first introduced in 2012. Most academics involved in our centre are from the Department of Computing. They lead the Research Institute in Trustworthy Industrial Control Systems (RITICS), co-lead the UK Research Institute on Verified Trustworthy Software Systems (VeTSS), and have played a major role in the creation and running of the PETRAS National (UK) Centre of Excellence for IoT Systems Cybersecurity amongst other initiatives. Our academics have graduated 18 PhD students and currently supervise 25 PhD students working on related projects. They have also held about £25M in funding, through research projects whose majority is led by our academics. Our research funds come from a variety of sources including UKRI, EU, Industry, and Defence.  

Our research groups boast world-leading expertise across a variety of cybersecurity domains including security and privacy in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), systems security, software and platform security, infrastructure security, attacks and defenses, and human, organisational and regulatory aspects of cybersecurity and privacy. 

Through collaborations with other departments, we apply interdisciplinary approaches to develop secure and private systems and methods with applications in healthcare, transportation and finance among others. We work with established industrial partners to transfer knowledge to products used by billions of users; we help run, advice or found start-ups to address novel real-world challenges; we work with national and international institutes, working groups and individuals to help shape policy, regulations, and national cybersecurity strategies.  

The following links lead you to related videos describing some of our work, the websites of specific groups working in this area in Computing, and our ACE-CSR and ACE-CSR Affiliate academics. 

Research Outputs

You can view our cyber security related publications here.

Academics

ACE-CSR Academics

ACE-CSR Affiliate Academics