I am an Associate Professor in Security and Crime Science in the Department of Security and Crime Science at University College London. I am part of UCL's Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber-Security Research (ACE-CSR) and a Principal Investigator at the Research Institute in Socio-Technical Security (RISCS). I currently lead UCL's part of the 3-year ESPRC project Protecting public-facing professionals and their dependents online (3PO).
My research focuses on human-centred security and privacy. I fundamentally believe that security and privacy are never the primary task but should instead be seen as an enabler for productivity and society more generally. I work with people and organisations to build and study systems and policies that are both secure and productive.
A complete list of my publications can be found here or on my Google Scholar Profile.
The 3PO is an EPSRC funded project associated with the National Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence Online. We focus on protecting public-facing police personnel and their dependents online by co-designing vulnerability assessments, harm reporting apps, and various risk assessment tools, alongside training and supporting materials.
Kris Christman is the senior research fellow on the project at UCL.
Dr Charles Weir and I have been working on a project to improve software security through a bottom-up approach. We focus on helping developers understand, appropriately evaluate and promote security inside their organisations. After successfully working with almost a dozen organisations and publishing our results in conferences and journals, we successfully commercialised our project through CyberASAP in 2021. We still hold regular training events, and our workshop and materials are open source and can be used free of charge. We continue working with companies, both for research to improve the package and for consultancy to help deliver the training. We have good links with organisations specialising in training and professional development, and certification bodies to improve secure software development in the UK and abroad.
Dr Tristan Caulfield and I have been working in collaboration with colleagues from Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) on cross-cultural studies on internet service providers' and individuals' attitudes, barriers, and incentives to secure the internet of things. The first part of this work has been published, and will be presented at USENIX Security '23.
I mainly supervise PhD students through UCL's CDT in Cybersecurity, the Dawes Centre for Future Crime, and UCL SECReT. If you want to study with me, please email me before submitting an application to UCL with a research proposal and a CV attached.
Dr Ingolf Becker
Security and Crime Science
University College London
Gower Street
London
WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom