I am an Associate Professor in Security and Crime Science in the Department of Security and Crime Science at University College London.
My research focuses on human-centred security and privacy. I believe that security and privacy is never the primary task. It enables productivity for individuals and organisations, and, more fundamentally, the trust a functioning society depends on. 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 was an EPSRC funded project associated with the National Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence Online. We focused on protecting public-facing police personnel and their dependants online by co-designing vulnerability assessments, harm reporting apps, and various risk assessment tools, alongside training and supporting materials.
Kris Christman was the senior research fellow for the project and is continuing some of the unfinished work in an honorary position 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 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 collaborate with colleagues from Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) on cross-cultural studies of internet service providers' and individuals' attitudes, barriers, and incentives to secure the internet of things. The first part of this work was published at USENIX Security '23.
I mainly supervise PhD students through the Dawes Centre for Future Crime and UCL SECReT. If you want to study with me through one of these routes, please email me, with a research proposal and CV attached, before submitting an application to UCL.
My department also runs the EPSRC CDT in Cyber-Physical Risk, which is very active and where I supervise students. This CDT is project-led: my colleagues and I propose the projects for which we recruit students. If you are interested, please browse the available topics and contact the relevant academics directly.
Dr Ingolf Becker
Security and Crime Science
University College London
Gower Street
London
WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom