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. 

Related videos

Should you believe anything you see and interact with online Play video

Should you believe anything you see and interact with online

The twenty first century has already been defined by cyberspace, powering a technology and information revolution that will have a profound impact on societies, industries, and the public sector. Smartphones, augmented reality glasses and 'thinking' robots are examples of how we will feel the influence of cyberspace on what we do and who we are.

Should you believe anything you see and interact with online

Should you believe anything you see and interact with online

The twenty first century has been defined by cyberspace

The twenty first century has already been defined by cyberspace, powering a technology and information revolution that will have a profound impact on societies, industries, and the public sector. Smartphones, augmented reality glasses and 'thinking' robots are examples of how we will feel the influence of cyberspace on what we do and who we are.

Defining the legal and ethical boundaries at the cyber front

Defining the legal and ethical boundaries at the cyber front

The 3rd Vincent Briscoe Annual Security Lecture

The 3rd Vincent Briscoe Annual Security Lecture - "Defining the legal and ethical boundaries at the cyber frontier" - Guest Speaker: The Honorable Michael Chertoff.

Accurate, robust metrics for usable security

Accurate, robust metrics for usable security

A critical part of building secure systems is verifying that they're usable and secure

A critical part of building secure systems is verifying that they're usable and secure in practice, and not just theoretically. This requires accurate and robust metrics for quantifying this "usability" and "practical security". For several years, we've been studying how to help users create passwords that are hard for attackers to crack, but are still easy for users to remember and use.

The dark net: inside the digital underworld

The dark net: inside the digital underworld

Explore the world of dark internet subcultures, crypto-currencies and the hidden web

Explore the world of dark internet subcultures, crypto-currencies and the hidden web. Jamie Bartlett delivers the Vincent Briscoe annual security lecture at Imperial College London.

Research groups and centres

Groups

Centres

Academics

ACE-CSR Academics

  • Dr Cristian Cadar

    Dr Cristian Cadar

    Personal details

    Dr Cristian Cadar Professor in Software Reliability

    +44 (0)20 7594 8244

    Research interests

    Software engineering, computer systems, software security, practical techniques for improving software reliability and security.

    Location

    435, Huxley Building

  • Dr Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye

    Personal details

    Dr Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye Reader

    +44 (0)20 7594 0991

    Research interests

    Data privacy, machine learning, biometric and behavioural identification, safe and anonymous use of data, data science for good.

    Location

    Data Science Institute, William Penney Laboratory

  • Dr Soteris Demetriou

    Soteris

    Personal details

    Dr Soteris Demetriou Lecturer

    Research Interest

    Mobile computing, security and privacy, systems security, smartphone security, Internet-of-Things (IoT) security.

    Location

    Room 353, ACE Extension

  • Prof Alastair Donaldson

    Dr Alastair Donaldson

    Personal details

    Prof Alastair Donaldson Professor

    +44 (0)20 7594 8266

    Research interests

    Formal verification for multicore software, software performance optimization.

    Location

    422, Huxley Building

  • Prof. Philippa Gardner

    Prof. Philippa Gardner

    Personal details

    Prof. Philippa Gardner Professor of Theoretical Computer Science

    +44 (0)20 7594 8292

    Research interests

    Programming languages, program analysis and verification, concurrency and resource reasoning.

    Location

    453, Huxley Building

  • Professor Hamed Haddadi

    Personal details

    Professor Hamed Haddadi Professor of Human-Centred Systems

    +44 20 7594 2584

    Research interests

    User-centred systems, networking, applied machine learning, privacy, security.

    Location

    I-X, Translation and Innovation Hub (I-HUB), White City Campus

  • Prof. Chris Hankin

    Prof. Chris Hankin

    Personal details

    Prof. Chris Hankin Security Science Fellow, Institute for Security Science and Technology

    +44 (0)20 7594 7619

    Research interests

    Security, Program Analysis and  Programming Language Theory.

    Location

    Sherfield Building

  • Prof. Michael Huth

    Prof. Michael Huth

    Personal details

    Prof. Michael Huth Professor of Computer Science and Head of Department

    +44 (0)20 7594 8355

    Research interests

    Trusted computing, access control, formal methods, insider threats, model-driven security, risk analysis.

    Location

    364, ACE Extension

  • Prof. Emil Lupu

    Prof. Emil Lupu

    Personal details

    Prof. Emil Lupu Professor of Computer Systems

    +44 (0)20 7594 8249

    Research interests

    Adaptive systems, security, personal networks for healthcare, autonomous vehicles, wireless sensor networks, security for sensor-based environments, security management and authorisation policies.

    Location

    564, Huxley Building

  • Dr Sergio Maffeis

    Dr Sergio Maffeis

    Personal details

    Dr Sergio Maffeis Senior Lecturer

    +44 (0)20 7594 8390

    Research interests

    Software security; network and web security; applications of machine learning to security; security of machine learning; formal methods.

    Location

    441, Huxley Building

  • Prof. Julie McCann

    Prof. Julie McCann

    Personal details

    Prof. Julie McCann Professor of Computer Systems

    +44 (0) 20 7594 8375

    Research interests

    Decentralised algorithms, network protocols, wireless sensor networks, ubiquitous, mobile, and autonomic computing.

    Location

    258, ACE Extension

  • Prof. Peter Pietzuch

    Prof. Peter Pietzuch

    Personal details

    Prof. Peter Pietzuch Professor of Distributed Systems and Director of Research

    +44 (0)20 7594 8314

    Research interests

    Distributed systems, operating systems, data management, stream processing, data-intensive applications, networking, systems for machine learning, security, confidential computing, trusted hardware, and decentralised ledgers.

    Location

    442, Huxley Building

  • Dr. Azalea Raad

    Dr. Azalea Raad

    Personal details

    Dr. Azalea Raad Senior Lecturer

    Research interests

    Programming languages, formal methods, verification, non-volatile memory, concurrency, persistency, weak memory models, transactional memory, program logics, and stateless model checking.

    Location

    Huxley Building

  • Dr. Lluis Vilanova

    Personal details

    Dr. Lluis Vilanova Senior Lecturer

    Research interests

    Computer architecture; operating systems; distributed systems; security and privacy; heterogeneous, parallel and accelerated systems; virtualization; cloud; hardware/software interfaces and co-design.

    Location

    556, Huxley Building

ACE-CSR Affiliate Academics

  • Dr Dalal Alrajeh

    Dr Dalal Alrajeh

    Personal details

    Dr Dalal Alrajeh Senior Lecturer

    +44 (0)20 7594 2421

    Research interests

    Formal methods, software engineering, artificial intelligence for correct software, and software for digital forensics.

    Location

    557, Huxley Building

  • Prof. Pantelis J Beaghton

    Prof. Pantelis J Beaghton

    Personal details

    Prof. Pantelis J Beaghton Professor of Practice

    Research interests

    Associate Director  Institute for Security Science and Technology

    Location

    Room E257, 2nd Floor, ACE Extension

  • Dr Mahdi Cheraghchi

    Dr Mahdi Cheraghchi

    Personal details

    Dr Mahdi Cheraghchi Visiting Reader

    +44 (0)20 7594 9043

    Research interests

    Communication and computing, randomness and computing, information and coding theory, algorithms and complexity theory, Boolean functional analysis, foundations of cryptography.

    Location

    353, ACE Extension

  • Dr Naranker Dulay

    Personal details

    Dr Naranker Dulay Reader in Computing Science

    +44 (0)20 7594 8288

    Research interests

    Security, pervasive/mobile/distributed systems, networking, software engineering, systems, and network management, applied machine learning.

    Location

    562, Huxley Building

  • Dr Ben Livshits

    Dr Ben Livshits

    Personal details

    Dr Ben Livshits Reader

    Research interests

    Security, privacy, program analysis, compilers, software engineering and crowd-sourcing.

    Location

    569, Huxley Building

  • Prof. Alessio Lomuscio

    Prof. Alessio Lomuscio

    Personal details

    Prof. Alessio Lomuscio Professor of Safe Artificial Intelligence

    + 44 (0)20 7594 8414

    Research interests

    Logic-based specification, verification of autonomous systems.

    Location

    I-X, Translation and Innovation Hub (I-HUB), White City Campus

  • Prof. Alessandra Russo

    Prof. Alessandra Russo

    Personal details

    Prof. Alessandra Russo Professor in Applied Computational Logic

    +44 (0)20 7594 8312

    Research interests

    Computational logic, logic-based machine learning, probabilistic and distributed Inference, cognitive systems, autonomous systems.

    Location

    I-X, Translation and Innovation Hub (I-HUB), White City Campus

  • Dr Herbert Wiklicky

    Dr Herbert Wiklicky

    Personal details

    Dr Herbert Wiklicky Reader in Computer Science

    +44 (0)20 7594 8206

    Research interests

    Program analysis, programming languages, semantics, probabilistic models, program synthesis, semantics in computer security, quantum computation.

    Location

    424, Huxley Building