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

  • We Want To Build A Better World ... And You're Part of It!
  • University to Host Major Cloud Conference (Scot-Cloud)
  • Symposium in Security and Cybercrime
  • SICSA SCONE Event hosted by the CDCS group
  • New Year Cyber Security Symposium aims to showcase opportunties in the Cyber Age
  • Cloud Security Congress Event to cover Cybercrime in the Cloud
  • Workshop on Next Generation Patient-Centric Systems
  • International Conference of Big Data in Cyber Security 10 May 2016, Craiglockhart
  • Symposium on Security and Cybercrime is a major success
  • Crypto Conference Goes Quantum around High Performance Computing
  • New Year Cyber Symposium Announced
  • Symposium on Security and Cybercrime
  • 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

 

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)
  • 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
  • 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
  • Owen Lo (our new PhD student) is a finalist for the Young Software Engineer of the Year.
  • Edinburgh Napier Team Wins University Cipher Cracking Award
  • 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
  • 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.
  • University aims to attract the finest Cyber minds to its GCHQ certified MSc
  • Professor Makes It Onto The Tech 100 in Scotland
  • Bright Red Publishing and Edinburgh Napier University finalists for Innovation of the Year
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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

 

Invited Speaker

  • 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
  • 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
  • Reseach Group to present the Innovative e-Health Platform at a health care event
  • 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
  • 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 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
  • Professor Bill Buchanan to give a keynote talk at CFET 2011

 

Media Activity

  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • IIDI Lead in Search for Cybercrime Specialists of the Future
  • Research Team Contribute To BBC Panorama Programme on Cyber Security
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • Boffins to build safer patient systems
  • Research group innovates in health and social care integration
  • BBC Click Item on Cybercrime on Mobile Phones
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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!
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • Institute Trains Advanced Digital Investigation Skills of Police Scotland

 

Research Degree External Examining

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

 

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

A Secure Random Number Generator with Immunity and Propagation Characteristics for Cryptography Functions

Journal Article
Saha, R., Geetha, G., Kumar, G., Buchanan, W. J., & Kim, T. (2021)
A Secure Random Number Generator with Immunity and Propagation Characteristics for Cryptography Functions. Applied Sciences, 11(17), Article 8073. https://doi.org/10.3390/app11178073
Cryptographic algorithms and functions should possess some of the important functional requirements such as: non-linearity, resiliency, propagation and immunity. Several previ...

LiSP-XK: Extended Light-Weight Signcryption for IoT in Resource-Constrained Environments

Journal Article
Kim, T., Kumar, G., Saha, R., Buchanan, W. J., Devgun, T., & Thomas, R. (2021)
LiSP-XK: Extended Light-Weight Signcryption for IoT in Resource-Constrained Environments. IEEE Access, 9, 100972-100980. https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2021.3097267
There is an increasing drive to provide improved levels of trust within an Internet-of-Things (IoTs) environments, but the devices and sensors used tend to be limited in their...

PyDentity: A playground for education and experimentation with the hyperledger verifiable information exchange platform

Journal Article
Abramson, W., Papadopoulos, P., Pitropakis, N., & Buchanan, W. J. (2021)
PyDentity: A playground for education and experimentation with the hyperledger verifiable information exchange platform. Software Impacts, 9, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.simpa.2021.100101
PyDentity lowers the entry barrier for parties interested in experimenting with the Hyperledger’s verifiable information exchange platform. It enables educators, developers an...

Electromagnetic Analysis of an Ultra-Lightweight Cipher: PRESENT

Conference Proceeding
Gunathilake, N. A., Al-Dubai, A., Buchanan, W. J., & Lo, O. (2021)
Electromagnetic Analysis of an Ultra-Lightweight Cipher: PRESENT. In 10th International Conference on Cryptography and Information Security (CRYPIS 2021) (185-205
Side-channel attacks are an unpredictable risk factor in cryptography. Therefore, continuous observations of physical leakages are essential to minimise vulnerabilities associ...

Differential Area Analysis for Ransomware Attack Detection within Mixed File Datasets

Journal Article
Davies, S. R., Macfarlane, R., & Buchanan, W. J. (2021)
Differential Area Analysis for Ransomware Attack Detection within Mixed File Datasets. Computers and Security, 108, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2021.102377
The threat from ransomware continues to grow both in the number of affected victims as well as the cost incurred by the people and organisations impacted in a successful attac...

A Lightweight Chaos-Based Medical Image Encryption Scheme Using Random Shuffling and XOR Operations

Journal Article
Masood, F., Driss, M., Boulila, W., Ahmad, J., ur Rehman, S., Jan, S. U., …Buchanan, W. J. (2022)
A Lightweight Chaos-Based Medical Image Encryption Scheme Using Random Shuffling and XOR Operations. Wireless Personal Communications, 127, 1405-1432. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-021-08584-z
Medical images possess significant importance in diagnostics when it comes to healthcare systems. These images contain confidential and sensitive information such as patients’...

Launching Adversarial Attacks against Network Intrusion Detection Systems for IoT

Journal Article
Papadopoulos, P., Thornewill Von Essen, O., Pitropakis, N., Chrysoulas, C., Mylonas, A., & Buchanan, W. J. (2021)
Launching Adversarial Attacks against Network Intrusion Detection Systems for IoT. Journal of Cybersecurity and Privacy, 1(2), 252-273. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcp1020014
As the internet continues to be populated with new devices and emerging technologies, the attack surface grows exponentially. Technology is shifting towards a profit-driven In...

A Comparative Analysis of Honeypots on Different Cloud Platforms

Journal Article
Kelly, C., Pitropakis, N., Mylonas, A., McKeown, S., & Buchanan, W. J. (2021)
A Comparative Analysis of Honeypots on Different Cloud Platforms. Sensors, 21(7), https://doi.org/10.3390/s21072433
In 2019, the majority of companies used at least one cloud computing service and it is expected that by the end of 2021, cloud data centres will process 94% of workloads. The ...

Privacy and Trust Redefined in Federated Machine Learning

Journal Article
Papadopoulos, P., Abramson, W., Hall, A. J., Pitropakis, N., & Buchanan, W. J. (2021)
Privacy and Trust Redefined in Federated Machine Learning. Machine Learning and Knowledge Extraction, 3(2), 333-356. https://doi.org/10.3390/make3020017
A common privacy issue in traditional machine learning is that data needs to be disclosed for the training procedures. In situations with highly sensitive data such as healthc...

An Experimental Analysis of Attack Classification Using Machine Learning in IoT Networks

Journal Article
Churcher, A., Ullah, R., Ahmad, J., Ur Rehman, S., Masood, F., Gogate, M., …Buchanan, W. J. (2021)
An Experimental Analysis of Attack Classification Using Machine Learning in IoT Networks. Sensors, 21(2), Article 446. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21020446
In recent years, there has been a massive increase in the amount of Internet of Things (IoT) devices as well as the data generated by such devices. The participating devices i...

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