Bill Buchanan
bill buchanan

Prof Bill Buchanan

Professor

 0131 455 2759

  B.Buchanan@napier.ac.uk

   

Biography

William (Bill) J Buchanan OBE is a Professor in the School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University, and a Fellow of the BCS and Principal Fellow of the HEA. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to cybersecurity. He has won student-voted awards for teaching excellence in 2011, 2014, 2015, 2019, 2020 and 2023. One of his most recent achievements is the creation of a Blockpass Identify Lab and which is one of the first of its type in the world, and has significant industry funding.

Bill lives and works in Edinburgh, and is a believer in fairness, justice, and freedom. His social media tagline reflects his strong belief in changing the world for the better: "A Serial Innovator. An Old World Breaker. A New World Creator." He also has a strong belief in the power of education, and in supporting innovation from every angle. Bill currently leads the Blockpass ID Lab and the Centre for Cybersystems and Cryptography. He works in the areas of blockchain, cryptography, trust and digital identity.

Bill has published over 30 academic books, and over 300 academic research papers. Along with this, Bill’s work has led to many areas of impact, including three highly successful spin-out companies (Zonefox, Symphonic Software and Cyan Forensics), along with awards for excellence in knowledge transfer and for teaching. Bill recently received an ”Outstanding Contribution to Knowledge Exchange” award, and was included in the FutureScot "Top 50 Scottish Tech People Who Are Changing The World”.

His main research focus is applied cryptography, digital privacy/trust, and digital identity. Bill’s work has led to many UK/World-wide patents, and three highly successful spin-out companies: Zonefox (zonefox.com); Symphonic (symphonicsoft.com); Cyacomb (cyanforensics.com). He has an i-10 index of 125 and supported a recent spin-out (MemCrypt) and which focuses on the discovery of encryption keys in running memory. This work is the first in the world to recover ChaCha20 encryption keys and salt values from running memory and is progressing towards VC funding.

Within the Blockpass ID Lab, Bill leads a team which focuses of areas of digital identity and cryptography and which hosts a number of research projects, including two EU projects (GLASS and TRUSTEE), and two KTP projects (MIRACL and Democracy Counts). Current work includes the integration of homomorphic encryption and ZKP (Zero Knowledge Proofs) into privacy-aware systems and with a special focus on the rights of citizens to privacy. A key focus of Bill’s work around industry collaborations, and which now included four co-funded PhD studentship collaborations with an industrial partner.

Bill has one of the most extensive cryptography/cybersecurity-related academic sites in the World (http://asecuritysite.com) and is involved in many areas of novel research and teaching, especially related to cryptography and cybersecurity. He was also included in the FutureScot “50 Scottish Tech People Who Are Changing The World". In 2017, he received the "Cyber Evangelist of the Year" award at the Scottish Cybersecurity Awards and with several awards for excellence in innovation. He has supervised 39 PhD and MPhil students to completion.

In Unit of Assessment 11 (Computer Science and Informatics) within REF 2021, Bill led two research impact case studies: "Enabling Sensitive Personal Data to be Shared with Trust using Novel Digital Security Methods", and "Protecting Employees, Children and Sensitive Data using Innovative Approaches to Cyber Security". Both of these impact case studies were graded as 4*.

His lectures are online at http://youtube.com/billatnapier, with over 1,000 on-line lectures, and which has around 10K subscribers, with more than four million minutes watched. Along with this, he created one of the most extensive online environments for schools in Scotland, and which has over 120K registered users (http://brightredbooks.net) and over one million test questions taken.

School

Research Groups

Themes

Research Areas

News

Events

Esteem

Advisory panels and expert committees or witness

  • Professor Presents Evidence to Investigatory Powers Bill Select Committee

 

Conference Organising Activity

  • New Year Cyber Security Symposium aims to showcase opportunties in the Cyber Age
  • Symposium on Security and Cybercrime
  • Symposium in Security and Cybercrime
  • SICSA SCONE Event hosted by the CDCS group
  • We Want To Build A Better World ... And You're Part of It!
  • University to Host Major Cloud Conference (Scot-Cloud)
  • International Conference of Big Data in Cyber Security 10 May 2016, Craiglockhart
  • Symposium on Security and Cybercrime is a major success
  • Cloud Security Congress Event to cover Cybercrime in the Cloud
  • Workshop on Next Generation Patient-Centric Systems
  • New Year Cyber Symposium Announced
  • Leading Harvard Researcher to Present at the Future of e-Health Event
  • University organises a major security event for industry
  • 2i Testing and Farrpoint to co-host Cyber Risk Symposium
  • Crypto Conference Goes Quantum around High Performance Computing

 

Editorial Activity

  • Professor Appointed Editor-in-Chief of High-impact Cyber Security Journal for World-leading research
  • Professor Appointed Editor-in-Chief for New - High Impact - Journal of Cyber Security Technology
  • Security and Network Forensics book hot off the press

 

Fellowships and Awards

  • Award of Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE)
  • Cryptography Research Work Wins Innovation of the Year at Principal’s Research Excellence Awards
  • Digital Forensics Research Wins Principal’s Research Excellence Award for Information Society
  • Jamie Graves is up for Young Innovator of the Year at the John Logiebaird Awards.
  • IIDI Professor launches Scottish Cipher Excellence Award 2011
  • Code cracking students best in Britain
  • Frank Greig wins award for Most Innovative Practice at Edinburgh Napier University
  • Guardian Toolkit project through to the final round of the Convergence Challenge
  • Edinburgh Napier University has gained GCHQ certification for MSc in Advanced Security and Digital Forensics
  • School of Computing becomes Academic Partner for Institute of Information Security Professionals (IISP)
  • Spin-out Company are Finalists in the Global Cyber Challenge event
  • Cryptography Research Work Awarded Innovation of the Year
  • ENU Student wins in World-wide Capture The Flag competition
  • Research team launches Scottish Cyber/Cipher Student of the Year Award
  • PhD Student (Owen Lo) awarded Lumison Prize (£1,000) at the Young Software Engineer of the Year Award 2010
  • Charley Celice wins Edinburgh Napier Student of the Year
  • Research group win "Highly Commended" Innovation Award for e-Health Platform
  • Collaboration with Bright Red Publishing shortlisted for Innovation of the Year award
  • Edinburgh Napier Team Wins University Cipher Cracking Award
  • University Spin-out Finalist in European Spin-out Award
  • IIDI Professor is a finalist for an award for outstanding leadership in ICT
  • Three PhD Computing Graduations at Summer Ceromany
  • Professor Makes It Onto The Tech 100 in Scotland
  • Bright Red Publishing and Edinburgh Napier University finalists for Innovation of the Year
  • University aims to attract the finest Cyber minds to its GCHQ certified MSc
  • Bright Red Publishing Collaboration receives Highly Commended Award for Interface's Innovation of the Year
  • IIDI Research team up for IET Innovation Award
  • IIDI spin-out Inquisitive Systems Ltd wins place in Academic Enterprise Awards Final
  • Major New Research Project in Triage for the Detection of Digital Contraband
  • Mat Miehling wins best final year PhD presention at Faculity Conference
  • Professor Makes It Onto Top 50 List of UK Higher Education Social Media Influencers
  • Edinburgh Napier MSc student wins Scottish Cipher Excellence 2011 Award
  • Ex-Napier Research Graduate wins 2010 Edinburgh Napier Alumnus of the Year
  • Research team finalists in BCS/Computing Technology Excellence Award
  • Steve Cordiner awarded an Honorary Doctorate
  • Cyber Security Teaching Team is a Finalist for Best Teaching Teaching in Postgraduate Awards
  • Edinburgh Napier University shortlisted in Prospects Postgraduate Awards 2014
  • Prof John Howie awarded an Honorary Doctorate
  • University Cyber Security Spin-out (Zonefox) Raises Another £650,000 in Investment
  • Cloud4Health is a finalist at the Scottish Digital Technology Awards 2012
  • Cloud4Health wins 2nd prize for Best IT Project at Digital Innovation Awards
  • Owen Lo (our new PhD student) is a finalist for the Young Software Engineer of the Year.

 

Invited Speaker

  • Professor Bill Buchanan to give invited talk at ARAB Health 2012
  • Professor to give end note talk at Cyber event
  • Professor to deliver Cyber Skills Keynote at Computing, ICT and Digital Media Conference
  • Professor to give opening keynote at Cyber Security Conference on the future of The Cyber Academy
  • Professor Bill Buchanan presents keynote speech at international seminar in the Netherlands
  • Professor to Present Session Keynote at CAS Scotland Annual Conference 2015 on Bright Red Digital Zone
  • Professor Bill Buchanan to give invited end-note presentation on Cloud in the Public Sector at major London event
  • Professor Bill Buchanan to give BCS Talk on Patient Centric Care using Secure Cloud infrastractures
  • Bill Buchanan gives keynote at health care event for the Cloud-based e-Health Platform
  • IIDI Professor to present invited talk at Cloud Computing 2012
  • Professor Bill Buchanan invited to present at the Data Handling in Health and Social Care conference
  • Professor Bill Buchanan to give a keynote talk at CFET 2011
  • Professor to give keynote on the Complete Anatomy of Heartbleed, TrueCrypt and Large-scale Vulnerabilities at Security Conference
  • IIDI Professor presents on the future of technology at the Royal Society of Edinburgh
  • Reseach Group to present the Innovative e-Health Platform at a health care event

 

Media Activity

  • Payfont secures world leading innovation support from Scottish Enterprise in collaboration with Crypto specialists at Edinburgh Napier
  • Cyber crime expert warns for cyber threat
  • Payfont secures £100k Scottish Enterprise funding with University Cyber Collaboration
  • Professor's Analysis of Scottish Independence Vote for Pre-vote trends
  • Sally Smith and Bill Buchanan make it into the Top 100 Tech Influencers in Scotland
  • Professor Outlines Issues in Banning Encryption in the UK on BBC Newsnight
  • Professor outlines IBM's track back to its roots
  • Professor warns against media hype on security threats on GameOver Zeus
  • Professor's Web site hits a million accesses mark
  • Professor Outlines Bitcoin Risks to The Scotsman
  • Professor outlines Yahoo's fine for PRISM breach
  • Proof-of-Concept project reaches the final of the Converge Challenge
  • Professor Outlines that the Sony Hack could be one of the Largest Data Breaches Ever
  • The Ghost of John Napier: Edinburgh Napier team focuses on University Cipher Challenges
  • FarrPoint appoints award-winning graduate for research colloboration
  • Edinburgh Napier University computing students participate in Cyber Security UK's University Challenge
  • Professor Analyses Trends in Scottish Independence Vote using Bookmarker Odds
  • Professor outlines Malware install for ATM compromise
  • 3,000th registration for the Bright Red Publishing Digital Zone
  • Centre of Excellence in Digital Forensics award for Edinburgh Napier
  • Research Team Confirm Major Flaw within Internet of Things' Security
  • YouTube lecture channel to support GCHQ-certified MSc hits 2,000+ subscribers.
  • The Herald reports that an Edinburgh Napier Expert warns of ‘growing threat’ from cyber crime
  • ZoneFox Presents at Apache Cassandra Meetup on Big Data Integration
  • Innovative Software puts a price on Cybercrime
  • Collaboration with Sitekit around Federated Identity, Trust and Governance
  • Prof Bill Buchanan appears on Newsnight Scotland
  • Research team outline a traffic light hack that could bring down a city
  • Professor Named in FutureScot Top 50 Tech People Who Are Changing The World
  • Reseachers Investigate Skeleton Key Attacks on User Passwords
  • Professor outlines vulnerabilities on Apple Mac with iWorm and Shell Shock
  • Bright Red Digital Zone Keeps Expanding
  • Research Team Propose that Digitising Health Records Could Cut Child Abuse
  • Research Team Presents to Sold-out Audience in Glasgow
  • Research Team outlines the Strange Mystery of Truecrypt - the Mary Celeste of IT
  • Research Team Analyse New Apple Mac Privileged Access Exploit
  • Professor outlines the need for Corroboration in Digital Evidence
  • Sally Smith appointed Dean of School for the School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier
  • New Innovation Collaboration aims to Secure Remote Working using Patent Pending Technology (IMP)
  • Location, Location, Location
  • IIDI Professor gives evidence on new Bill
  • We're looking for the smartest around to build world-leading infrastructures
  • The Cyber Academy recruit their first two fully funded PhD studentships ... and more to follow
  • IIDI selects miiCard as identity provider for safi.re-based information sharing governance
  • Mobile application uses predictive analytics to identify patients at risk and reduce hospital admissions
  • Institute Trains Advanced Digital Investigation Skills of Police Scotland
  • University Research Team Analyse Heartbleed Part 2
  • Collaboration Reaches a Higher Level for Educational Platforms
  • UK scientists track disease spread with smartphones (Electronics Weekly)
  • Interface Profiles An Exemplar for University/SME Collobration
  • John Howie Awarded a Visiting Professorship
  • Professor Outlines Ransomware Attack on BBC
  • Professor outlines the Boleto fraud and that you don't need a fast car to rob a bank anymore
  • Smartphones track the spread of flu
  • IIDI Professor says that Scotland could lead world in cyber crime fight
  • Bright Red Publishing Digital Zone passes 5,000 registration target, with Biology out in-front
  • Scottish Enterprise Profile IIDI Security Professor
  • Boffins to build safer patient systems
  • Research group innovates in health and social care integration
  • BBC Click Item on Cybercrime on Mobile Phones
  • Research Team Outline SQL Injection Attack Which Gathered 1.2 Billion Usernames/Passwords
  • IIDI research contributes to miiCard white paper on trusted data governance
  • Innovation Collaboration Leads to Major Cryptography Work with Payfont
  • Hutchinson Networks Showcase Collaboration Work Around Innovation and Dissemination
  • Let the Cracking Begin... Sunderland, Portsmouth, Royal Holloway, Plymouth, Bristol and us!
  • Christmas Lecture for Schools starts in Glasgow
  • Head of School and IIDI Professor make Top 100 ICT List
  • Edinburgh Napier Spin-out ZoneFox signs deal with major Security Firm
  • Napier researchers track infection spread with a smartphone
  • Academic Team Identify Key Risks in Mobile Device Security at KPMG Seminar
  • Over 3,000 pupils from 50 schools sign up for Christmas Cyber Lecture
  • University Research Team Outlines TweetDeck Hack
  • Big Data Collaboration Aims to Improve Health and Social Care
  • Professor outlines that Shellshock is not as much of a risk than Heartbleed
  • Edinburgh Napier designed e-Health Platform goes live, with coverage in The Guardian, BMJ, ZDNet and The Financial Times
  • Professor outlines some of the dangers in using digital data as evidence
  • Professor outlines the details of Ashley Madison breach and on the rise of the moralist hacker
  • Cyber Christmas Lecture for Schools (first event sold-out)
  • Professor Outlines The Areas of Change in Cyber Security
  • Professor's On-line Lectures Pass One Million Minutes Mark on YouTube
  • Professor outlines Tor attack methods
  • Professor outlines case to BBC for Security in Cyber Space around the Scottish Independence debate
  • Professor to Outline Opportunities in Education at Kickstart Summer School
  • Security Team Discover New Distributed Denial of Service Amplification Attack
  • Support for young Scottish software company
  • Professor outlines DarkHotel and Advanced Persistent Threat
  • The Cyber Academy Hosts Two New PhD Studentships in Cloud Security
  • 4 days ... 60 presentations ... 4 cities ... over 3,000 kids .. and great fun!
  • IIDI Lead in Search for Cybercrime Specialists of the Future
  • Research Team Contribute To BBC Panorama Programme on Cyber Security

 

Research Degree External Examining

  • Prof William Buchanan starts external examiner duties at Dublin City University
  • PhD Examination, Crainfield University
  • New External Examiner post at Dublin City University
  • External Examiner PhD at the University of Plymouth
  • PhD Examination, Royal Holloway, University of London
  • Professor to examine PhD on the Authentication of Mobile Computing Devices in a Heterogeneous Environment
  • Prof Bill Buchanan completes PhD Viva on Intrusion Detection Systems at the University of Plymouth
  • Professor set for PhD Examination at Dublin City University in Network Intrusion Detection and Prevention
  • PhD Examination, University of Bedfordshire
  • Bill Buchanan to serve as an external examiner at Royal Holloway, University of London
  • Bill to serve as a PhD examiner at the University of Essex
  • Bill Buchanan completes PhD External Examiner duties at the University of the West of Scotland
  • Prof William Buchanan completes PhD Viva at the University of Essex

 

Spin-outs and Licences

  • IIDI team files patent on improved information sharing using Binary Decision Diagrams (BDDs)
  • University Spin-out (ZoneFox) raises over £1 million for Cybersecurity Software
  • Inquisitive Systems spin-out receives an over subscription of investors.
  • New spin-out aims to make a major impact in Trust and Governance

 

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366 results

Using Social Media & Sentiment Analysis to Make Investment Decisions

Journal Article
Hasselgren, B., Chrysoulas, C., Pitropakis, N., & Buchanan, W. J. (2023)
Using Social Media & Sentiment Analysis to Make Investment Decisions. Future Internet, 15(1), Article 5. https://doi.org/10.3390/fi15010005
Making investment decisions by utilizing sentiment data from social media (SM) is starting to become a more tangible concept. There has been a broad investigation into this fi...

A framework for live host-based Bitcoin wallet forensics and triage

Journal Article
Holmes, A., & Buchanan, W. J. (2023)
A framework for live host-based Bitcoin wallet forensics and triage. Forensic Science International: Digital Investigation, 44, Article 301486. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsidi.2022.301486
Organised crime and cybercriminals use Bitcoin, a popular cryptocurrency, to launder money and move it across borders with impunity. The UK and other countries have legislatio...

Hamming Distributions of Popular Perceptual Hashing Techniques

Journal Article
McKeown, S., & Buchanan, W. J. (in press)
Hamming Distributions of Popular Perceptual Hashing Techniques. Forensic Science International: Digital Investigation,
Content-based file matching has been widely deployed for decades, largely for the detection of sources of copyright infringement, extremist materials, and abusive sexual media...

A DNA Based Colour Image Encryption Scheme Using A Convolutional Autoencoder

Journal Article
Ahmed, F., Ur Rehman, M., Ahmad, J., Shahbaz Khan, M., Boulila, W., Srivastava, G., …Buchanan, W. J. (in press)
A DNA Based Colour Image Encryption Scheme Using A Convolutional Autoencoder. ACM transactions on multimedia computing communications and applications, https://doi.org/10.1145/3570165
With the advancement in technology, digital images can easily be transmitted and stored over the Internet. Encryption is used to avoid illegal interception of digital images. ...

Comparison of Entropy Calculation Methods for Ransomware Encrypted File Identification

Journal Article
Davies, S., Macfarlane, R., & Buchanan, W. (2022)
Comparison of Entropy Calculation Methods for Ransomware Encrypted File Identification. Entropy, 24(10), Article 1503. https://doi.org/10.3390/e24101503
Ransomware is a malicious class of software that utilises encryption to implement an attack on system availability. The target’s data remains encrypted and is held captive by ...

Trusted Threat Intelligence Sharing in Practice and Performance Benchmarking through the Hyperledger Fabric Platform

Journal Article
Ali, H., Ahmad, J., Jaroucheh, Z., Papadopoulos, P., Pitropakis, N., Lo, O., …Buchanan, W. J. (2022)
Trusted Threat Intelligence Sharing in Practice and Performance Benchmarking through the Hyperledger Fabric Platform. Entropy, 24(10), Article 1379. https://doi.org/10.3390/e24101379
Historically, threat information sharing has relied on manual modelling and centralised network systems, which can be inefficient, insecure, and prone to errors. Alternatively...

Electromagnetic Side-Channel Attack Resilience against PRESENT Lightweight Block Cipher

Conference Proceeding
Gunathilake, N. A., Al-Dubai, A., Buchanan, W. J., & Lo, O. (2022)
Electromagnetic Side-Channel Attack Resilience against PRESENT Lightweight Block Cipher. In 2022 6th International Conference on Cryptography, Security and Privacy (CSP). https://doi.org/10.1109/CSP55486.2022.00018
Lightweight cryptography is a novel diversion from conventional cryptography that targets internet-of-things (IoT) platform due to resource constraints. In comparison, it offe...

A comprehensive survey of authentication methods in Internet-of-Things and its conjunctions

Journal Article
Kumar, A., Saha, R., Conti, M., Kumar, G., Buchanan, W. J., & Kim, T. H. (2022)
A comprehensive survey of authentication methods in Internet-of-Things and its conjunctions. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 204, Article 103414. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2022.103414
Internet of Thing (IoT) is one of the most influential technologies in the present time. People, processes, and things are connected with the Internet through IoT. With the in...

A New Multistage Encryption Scheme Using Linear Feedback Register and Chaos-Based Quantum Map

Journal Article
Alharbi, A. R., Ahmad, J., Arshad, Shaukat, S., Masood, F., Ghadi, Y. Y., …Buchanan, W. J. (2022)
A New Multistage Encryption Scheme Using Linear Feedback Register and Chaos-Based Quantum Map. Complexity, 2022, Article 7047282. https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/7047282
With the increasing volume of data transmission through insecure communication channels, big data security has become one of the important concerns in the cybersecurity domain...

GLASS: A Citizen-Centric Distributed Data-Sharing Model within an e-Governance Architecture

Journal Article
Lo, O., Buchanan, W., Sayeed, S., Papadopoulos, P., Pitropakis, N., & Chrysoulas, C. (2022)
GLASS: A Citizen-Centric Distributed Data-Sharing Model within an e-Governance Architecture. Sensors, 22(6), Article 2291. https://doi.org/10.3390/s22062291
E-governance is a process that aims to enhance a government’s ability to simplify all the processes that may involve government, citizens, businesses, and so on. The rapid evo...

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