MSc Cyber Security

Dr Fauzia Idrees is the Programme Director of the MSc in Cyber Security and the Royal Holoway University of London’s flagship campus MSc in Information Security. She is the Academic Lead for NCSC certification for Distance Learning programmes and serving as a member of ISG Industry advisory panel. She is an Electronics Engineer with a PhD in Information Security Engineering, an MSc in Information Security, and an MBA in Entrepreneurship & Innovations. Fauzia has over 24 years of work experience in the Military, industry, and academia. She is a Lead Auditor in ISO 17025 accreditation. Her research areas include malware detection, network security and secure application development.

Chris Mitchell was appointed as Professor Computer Science at Royal Holloway University of London in 1990, where he co-founded the Information Security Group with Professor Fred Piper later that year. He played a leading role in developing the ground-breaking MSc in Information Security, which took its first students in 1992. After gaining his BSc (1975) and PhD (1979) in Mathematics from Westfield College, University of London, he worked in industry for almost 11 years - first with Racal Comsec in Salisbury, UK, where he worked on the design of data encryption and voice security devices, and subsequently at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Bristol, UK, where he worked on a range of topics in Computer and Network Security. He has been active in cyber security standardisation for over 35 years, and he has acted as editor for over 20 ISO/IEC standards, spanning topics from cryptography to cloud security and privacy. He has been co-editor-in-chief of the major academic journal Designs, Codes and Cryptography, published by Springer, for over 10 years. He has supervised over 30 PhD students to completion.

Professor Keith Martin BSc (Glasgow), PhD (London), CMath FIMA is Professor of Information Security. He received his BSc (Hons) in Mathematics from the University of Glasgow in 1988 and a PhD from Royal Holloway in 1991. Between 1992 and 1996 he held a Research Fellowship at the University of Adelaide, investigating mathematical modelling of cryptographic key distribution problems. In 1996 he joined the COSIC research group of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, working on security for third generation mobile communications. Keith rejoined Royal Holloway in January 2000, became a Professor in Information Security in 2007 and was Director of the Information Security Group between 2010 and 2015. He is currently Director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Cyber Security for the Everyday and leads Royal Holloway’s NCSC Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Education. Keith's current research interests include key management, cryptographic applications and geopolitical aspects of cyber security. He is the author of the textbook “Everyday Cryptography” by Oxford University Press, now in its second edition, and the popular science book “Cryptography: The Key to Digital Security, How it Works and Why it Matters”. As well as academic teaching, Keith regularly presents to broader audiences including at professional events and schools.

Dr Konstantinos Mersinas is an Associate Professor in Information Security at Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL). He has a PhD and an MSc from the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway, and an MSci in Mathematics from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He worked as a security professional before he moved from the industry to academia. He is a Fellow for Teaching and Learning Support in Higher Education, with the Higher Education Academy, a Lead Auditor in Information Security Management Systems, and a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP).

Konstantinos is the Director of the MSc in Cyber Security; he is the Academic Lead for Cyber Security Placements at RHUL, creating and maintaining collaborations with the industry.

He has conducted research consultancies with KPMG Netherlands (‘Attacker Economics and Threat Modelling’) and has served as an Expert Advisor for the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) (‘Framing the Nature and Scale of Cyber Security Vulnerabilities within the Current Consumer Internet of Things (‘IoT’) Landscape’ and for the UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and the Office for Product Safety & Standards (OPSS) (‘Study on the Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Product Safety’).

Konstantinos’ research revolves around risk perception, risk attitudes, security behaviours and cybercrime. The approach is highly experimental and bridges cybersecurity, economics and psychology. His behavioural experiments have been referenced by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in their ‘Cyber Risk Economics Capability Gaps Research Strategy’ report. He co-founded the research group HIVE (Hub for research into Intergenerational Exploitation to Vulnerability) with colleagues from Law and Psychology. Projects of the group include protecting adolescents and the elderly from cyberbullying/cyberstalking and financial abuse. He is a member of the International Cyber Security Centre of Excellence (INCS-CoE), a collaborative effort between UK, USA and Japan. In 2021, he provided input for the Online Harms Bill to the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Cybersecurity. In 2022, he served as a member of the Fraud Act 2006 and Digital Fraud Committee with the UK Parliament. His research has been funded by the National Cyber Security Centre in the UK.

Dr Peter Komisarczuk BSc (Nottingham), MSc (Nottingham), PhD (Surrey), CEng (Engineering Council (UK)) is an academic in the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway, University of London. Peter has worked in industry in various R&D roles at Ericsson, Fujitsu and Nortel Networks in the areas of next generation 'intelligent networks', access and optical networks and Internet technology. Peter moved into academia in 2003 and worked at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) 2003-2010, the University of West London (UWL) 2010-2014 and he joined Royal Holloway in 2015. Peter teaches in the area of networks, network security, cyber security, and employability. Peter is a chartered engineer (CEng), and is a member of the British Computer Society (BCS), the Institute of Engineering Technology (IET) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).