Academic Marginalia

TrustCom 2014, Beijing, China | Picture by  Peter23 We recently presented our initial work on developing quantitative models of privacy risk and social benefit at TrustCom 2014 in China.  The work was undertaken by Mu Yang, a post-doctoral researcher on the Adaptive Security and Privacy  project. The paper was recognised as the Best Paper at the conference, being judged against 73 papers presented at the conference The models presented in the paper could be used to optimise the audience for online social networking postings and we are currently developing a field experiment to evaluate the approach we are proposing.  You can find the paper at the link below: Yang, Mu; Yu, Yijun; Bandara, Arosha and Nuseibeh, Bashar (2014). Adaptive sharing for online social networks: a trade-off between privacy risk and social benefit. In: 13th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (IEEE TrustCom-14), 24-26 September 2014, Beijing, China.

Introduction to Cyber Security Over the past few months I have been working with my colleagues at The Open University to produce a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) that will provide learners with basic knowledge and skills relating to information security.  " Introduction to Cyber Security " is an 8-week course that will be hosted on the Futurelearn platform, with the first presentation scheduled to start on 13 October.  Learners will be guided through the content by Cory Doctorow, who is a visiting professor at the OU. The course was produced with the support of the UK government, as part of the National Cyber Security Programme, with the aim of raising general awareness and interest relating to cyber security.     It is hoped that learners who complete the course - from young people considering careers in computing, to those already in work looking to improve their knowledge and skills, or members of the public looking to protect themselves online - will gain valuab