De Montfort University in Leicester and Northumbria University have been added to the list of academic centres of excellence in cyber security research (ACEs-CSR).
They have been acknowledged as having first rate research capabilities by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
An announcement by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) says the universities’ strengths include improving approaches to help people better understand how to protect themselves online, and developing new technologies to protect critical infrastructure like telecommunications.
They join a list of 17 other institutions regarded as strategic partners to government in cyber security research.
Chris Ensor, NCSC deputy director for cyber growth said: “I’m delighted to welcome Northumbria and De Montfort Universities to the ACE-CSR community. We have seen the community grow from eight universities to 19 and that has been down to the hard work and investment they have all put in.
“Both are existing members of our research institutes and it is brilliant to see how they have built on and developed their broader capacity and capability over several years, to now meet the standards required of an academic centre of excellence in cyber security research.”
Professor Lynne Coventry, principal investigator and research director of psychology who leads the Northumbria Cyber Security Research Group, said it has a multidisciplinary approach that integrates knowledge on technology, human behaviour, business, law and design.
Professor Eerke Boiten, director of the CTI and professor in cyber security at De Montfort University, highlighted its plans for national and international collaborative research in topics such as industrial control systems, human factors in security, incident response, cyber crime and privacy.
Image from iStock, Henrik Jonsson
