Research & Initiatives
The Centre serves as a national focal point for dissemination and consultation on cybersecurity management and cyber resilience via workshops, media, engagement with community and industry stakeholders.The Centre is working closely with organisations and agencies whose mission it is to protect the Digital Economy and general public from cybercrime such as police, particularly the West Midlands Police, GCHQ, the PCPI and the Police Digital Security Centre. Our work with stakeholders enables the Centre to enhance protections and mitigate cyber risks to individuals, to companies and organisations, and to wider society.
CSI continues to develop and bring together early career researchers including PhDs and researchers from within the University and external to it, thereby ensuring a sustainable pipeline of applicable research in this important area.
EU and UKRI-funded Research Projects
CyberKali Attracting Young Midlands Based Female Decision Makers into Cyber Security£ 90,757
CyberKali is delivered by a nationally leading consortium of the University of Warwick ACE, CSE and Aston Cyber Security Innovation Centre (CSI) in close collaboration with employers, recruiters, UK Cyber Security Council, the Ethnic Minorities in Cyber (EMiC) network, and several Birmingham based schools. The programme of activities is designed to: attract diverse learner cohorts; provide them with unique in-class cyber skills experiences; and provide exposure to resilient pathways to education and work particularly from the ethnic minorities background, into the cyber security careers.
Early Digital Diagnostics and InterventionEDDI- € 275,065.00
EDDI, a European Commission project led by Aston University (with partners from Turkey, Greece, the Netherlands and French Polynesia) aims to help teachers, families and students to better understand the causes and consequences of early school leaving, while helping find possible solutions to the ESL problem.
Nov 2020 - Apr 2023
RKE Pump Priming Fund£ 20,000
This project enables knowledge exchange and policy support in the WM for research and mapping of the FinTech cybersecurity ecosystem; considered in this context to be the current environment, conditions and interventions that exist to influence or affect Fintech-focused cybersecurity companies.
Jan 2022 - Jul 2022
Cyber Explorer£ 53,960
Project evaluating the gamification strategy in cyber skills acquisition. Cyber Explorers, an initiative led by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), showcases how the skills being taught in class are linked to real world situations, through an immersive, gamified learning experience. Aston is delivering this learning platform to teach cyber skills to school pupils in the WM region.
Jan 2022 - Jul 2022
Cyber Ecosystem Mapping£ 180,000
Project for Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), led by EY Government and Public Sector Cyber Security and Aston University. This project provides DCMS with research and mapping of the UK’s cybersecurity ecosystem across all regions, to inform future investment and decision-making that will support sector-wide growth and integration.
Jan 2022 - Jul 2022
Cyber ASAP – Consent Management by Receipts£ 31,942
CyberASAP is a joint initiative of UK DCMS, KTN, and Innovate UK. Our project Consent Management by Receipts (CMbyReceipts) will look into novel approaches to operationalise Consent Management on the Internet, a key component of Data Protection, with Consent Receipts.
Jan 2022 - Jul 2022
Privacy Enhancing Mechanism for Cyber Threat Intelligence£ 7,500
This project uses advance privacy protection technologies and adapt Differential Privacy methods to support development of privacy-enhancing mechanisms for public sharing of cyber threat intelligence (CTI).
Jan 2022 - Jul 2022
Horizon 2020 TRACE - tracing illicit money flows€ 7,000,000.00
17 partners including European national crime agencies and police authorities. A Research and Innovation Action (RIA) responding to SU-FCT02-2020 -- Technologies to Enhance the Fight Against Crime and Terrorism Detecting and tracing hidden and illicit money flows are notoriously difficult, as organised crime networks operate on a global scale and use legal loopholes, as well as technical innovations to protect their activities. In TRACE, the partners will co-create with LEAs, develop and use highly innovative complex data management solutions in combination with modular artificial intelligent analytics to enhance LEAs capabilities in detecting, tracing, confiscating and recovering illicit money flows and generating court-proof e-evidence.
ESRC DiSCRIBE CALL TOPIC 3: Regulation, Policy and Cybersecurity£ 52,389.00
Project Aim: Carry out research on the regulatory landscape within the UK digital sector, which is focused on the design and use of hardware security as part of digital products and services.
GCRF 2019/2020 Research and Innovation Global Review of the Virtual Financial Assets ( VFA ) Regulatory Frameworks£ 50,000
Transnational Partnership in Blockchain and Crypto currency innovation between the UK and Caribbean ODA/LDC states.
INNOVATE UK - Synthetic Crypto currency Fraud Simulator phase 1
Synthetic Crypto currency Fraud Simulator project is worth 32,000.00, working with the UK LEAS to enhance their capacity in detecting, tracing, confiscating and recovering illicit money flows.