Nick Pitropakis
nick pitropakis

Dr Nick Pitropakis

Associate Professor

Biography

Dr Nick Pitropakis is an Associate Professor of cybersecurity at the School of Computing of Edinburgh Napier University, and a Fellow of the HEA. He is also a core member of the Blockpass Identity Lab. Dr Pitropakis has a strong research background in attacks against machine learning. His current research interests include adversarial machine learning, trust and privacy using distributed ledger technology, advanced cyber attack attribution, and data science applied to cyber security and IoT device security. Dr Pitropakis is leading the integrated apprenticeship scheme BSc Cyber Security, which is the first in the UK to receive full NCSC accreditation. He is teaching Cyber-related graduate apprenticeship degrees, both running in Scotland and England. He is also the external examiner of The American College in Greece (ACG), covering the BSc (Hons) Information Technology and BSc (Hons) Cyber Security and Networking programmes provided by The Open University, and the Lead External Examiner for MSc Cyber Security (Newcastle and London campuses) of Northumbria University.
Dr Pitropakis is currently leading the Horizon Europe project Trust and Privacy-Preserving Computing Platform for Crossborder Federation of Personal Data (TRUSTEE). Prior to joining ENU in 2016, he worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher for the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he was involved in a U.S. Department of Defense project (Methods for producing standardized and transparent attribution) worth 17.3 million dollars aiming at advanced attribution of malicious parties. His work has impacted major trademark holders and especially average users, whose awareness was increased against combosquatting abuse.
His recent work has included £310,843 for the EU TRUSTEE project and over £300,000 through Edinburgh Napier’s latest spinout TRUEDEPLOY. Dr Pitropakis has established synergies around the UK with other centres of excellence in cyber security like Royal Holloway and the University of Lancaster. Additionally, he has been working with leading European and international partners such as Fraunhofer, Panasonic, Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Ericsson Nikola Tesla to name a few.
Based on the outcomes of these projects, Dr Pitropakis has published 60 quality scholarly articles. His research has been awarded multiple times and recently one of his projects as well as his last PhD graduate won the Scottish Cyber Awards. Dr Pitropakis has also been invited to serve as an organizing and program committee member of major international conferences and as an editor for prestigious journals. In addition, Dr Pitropakis has been involved in supervising Research MSc and PhD students since he accomplished his PhD in 2015. Currently, Dr Pitropakis is supervising 2 PhD students, and their research activities are being disseminated in high-quality conferences and journals. His latest PhD graduate Dr Pavlos Papadopoulos is leading the ENU spinout TRUEDEPLOY.

Research Areas

Events

Esteem

Conference Organising Activity

  • International Workshop on AI-driven Trustworthy, Secure, and Privacy-Preserving Computing (INFOCOM 2023 AidTSP)
  • IEEE DSC 2022, 2022 IEEE Conference on Dependable and Secure Computing (Local Arrangements Co-chair)
  • MSN, International Conference on Mobility, Sensing and Networking
  • SRC, SUSTAINABILITY AND RESILIENCE CONFERENCE: DESIGN INNOVATION
  • SecureComm, International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks
  • ISC, International Conference on Information Security
  • UbiSec, International Conference on Ubiquitous Security
  • ISPEC, International Conference on Information Security Practice and Experience
  • ICISSP, The International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy
  • CRYPIS, International Conference on Cryptography and Information Securit
  • DPSC, Digital Privacy and Security Conference
  • STM, International Workshop on Security and Trust Management
  • CyberICPS, International Workshop On The Security Of Industrial Control Systems & Of Cyber- Physical Systems
  • TrustBus, International Conference on Trust, Privacy and Security in Digital Business
  • TrustCom, The IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications
  • SECURWARE, The International Conference on Emerging Security Information, Systems and Technologies

 

Editorial Activity

  • Editor of Cybersecurity and Privacy (specialty section of Frontiers in Big Data)
  • Guest Editor in Frontiers in Sociology
  • MDPI SENSORS Guest Editor of Special Issue "Cyber Situational Awareness in Computer Networks"
  • MDPI SENSORS - Journal Topical Advisory Panel Member

 

External Examining/Validations

  • Lead examiner for MSc Cyber Security (Newcastle and London campuses)
  • External Examiner for Open University

 

Fellowships and Awards

  • Truedeploy was nominated for the Leading Light Innovation Award at Scottish Cyber Awards 2022
  • GLASS won the Leading Light Innovation Award at Scottish Cyber Awards 2022
  • Pavlos Papadopoulos won Outstanding Young Person in Cyber at Scottish Cyber Awards 2022
  • MDPI Computers Journal Cover: Hughes K, Papadopoulos P, Pitropakis N, Smales A, Ahmad J, Buchanan WJ. Browsers Private Mode: Is It What We Were Promised? Computers. 2021; 10(12):165.
  • SINCONF 2021, Best Paper Award: Abramson, W., Buchanan, W. J., Sayeed, S., Pitropakis, N., & Lo, O. (2021). PAN-DOMAIN: Privacy-preserving Sharing and Auditing of Infection Identifier Matching.
  • MDPI SENSORS Editor’s Choice Article: Stamatellis, C., Papadopoulos, P., Pitropakis, N., Katsikas, S., & Buchanan, W. J. (2020). A Privacy-Preserving Healthcare Framework Using Hyperledger Fabric. Sensors, 20(22), 6587.
  • MDPI Computers Journal Cover: Papadopoulos, P., Pitropakis, N., Buchanan, W. J., Lo, O., & Katsikas, S. (2020). Privacy-Preserving Passive DNS. Computers, 9(3), 64.

 

Grant Reviewer

  • Reviewer of Greek General Secretariat for Research and Innovation
  • Israel Science Foundation (ISF)
  • European Research Council Starting Grant

 

Invited Speaker

  • Connect Week 2022
  • Man Versus The Machine: The Adversarial Era
  • “Man Against The Machine: Losing My Perception”
  • Attacks against machine learning: Influencing cybersecurity and our everyday life
  • SANCUS: Redefining security and Privacy in Modern ICT Infrastructures
  • 5G and the Pathway to Privacy-Preserving Infection Tracking and Contact Tracing in SANCUS Project
  • NTNU CISaR Workshop
  • Domain Name System abuse

 

Media Activity

  • Interview/Discussion about Computer Science studies pcsteps.gr (YouTube)
  • Discussion at Radio Forth

 

Research Degree External Examining

  • Security and Privacy Enhancing Mechanisms for The Android Operating System

 

Reviewing

  • IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (J-SAC)
  • Elsevier Journal of Information Security And Applications
  • PeerJ Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence Review - Springer
  • Sustainability - MDPI
  • Security and Communication Networks - Hindawi
  • Personal and Ubiquitous Computing - Springer
  • IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics
  • Algorithms MDPI
  • IEEE Access
  • Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, Elsevier
  • IET Information Security
  • Information Sciences - Elsevier
  • International Journal of Medical Informatics
  • Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, Springer
  • Machine Learning and Knowledge Extraction (MAKE) - MDPI
  • Future Internet - MDPI
  • The Computer Journal - Oxford University Press
  • Open Journal of Information Systems (OJIS), RonPub
  • Electronics - MDPI
  • Information - MDPI
  • Cybersecurity - Springer
  • Computer Communications - Elsevier
  • Sensors - MDPI
  • Computers - MDPI
  • Computers and Security (COSE)
  • Symmetry - MDPI
  • Applied Sciences - MDPI
  • Applied Computing and Informatics - Emerald
  • Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing - Hindawi
  • IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems
  • International Journal of Machine Learning and Cybernetics
  • Technologies - MDPI
  • Journal of Cyber Security Technology - Taylor & Francis
  • Journal Of Cloud Computing (JOCCASA), Springer
  • European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS)
  • Systems - MDPI

 

Spin-outs and Licences

  • TrueDeploy

 

Visiting Positions

  • Visiting Researcher

 

Date


55 results

Towards The Creation Of The Future Fish Farm

Journal Article
Papadopoulos, P., Buchanan, W. J., Sayeed, S., & Pitropakis, N. (2023)
Towards The Creation Of The Future Fish Farm. Journal of Surveillance, Security and Safety, 4, 1-3. https://doi.org/10.20517/jsss.2022.16
Aim: A fish farm is an area where fish raise and bred for food. Fish farm environments support the care and management of seafood within a controlled environment. Over the pas...

Post Quantum Cryptography Analysis of TLS Tunneling on a Constrained Device

Conference Proceeding
Barton, J., Pitropakis, N., Buchanan, W., Sayeed, S., & Abramson, W. (2022)
Post Quantum Cryptography Analysis of TLS Tunneling on a Constrained Device. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy - ICISSP (551-561). https://doi.org/10.5220/0010903000003120
Advances in quantum computing make Shor’s algorithm for factorising numbers ever more tractable. This threatens the security of any cryptographic system which often relies on ...

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...

Investigating Machine Learning Attacks on Financial Time Series Models

Journal Article
Gallagher, M., Pitropakis, N., Chrysoulas, C., Papadopoulos, P., Mylonas, A., & Katsikas, S. (2022)
Investigating Machine Learning Attacks on Financial Time Series Models. Computers and Security, 123, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2022.102933
Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) already support human decision-making and complement professional roles, and are expected in the future to be sufficiently tr...

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...

DRaNN_PSO: A deep random neural network with particle swarm optimization for intrusion detection in the industrial internet of things

Journal Article
Ahmad, J., Shah, S. A., Latif, S., Ahmed, F., Zou, Z., & Pitropakis, N. (2022)
DRaNN_PSO: A deep random neural network with particle swarm optimization for intrusion detection in the industrial internet of things. Journal of King Saud University (Computer and Information Sciences), 34(10), 8112-8121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jksuci.2022.07.023
The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is a rapidly emerging technology that increases the efficiency and productivity of industrial environments by integrating smart sensor...

A New Intrusion Detection System for the Internet of Things via Deep Convolutional Neural Network and Feature Engineering

Journal Article
Ullah, S., Ahmad, J., Khan, M. A., Alkhammash, E. H., Hadjouni, M., Ghadi, Y. Y., …Pitropakis, N. (2022)
A New Intrusion Detection System for the Internet of Things via Deep Convolutional Neural Network and Feature Engineering. Sensors, 22(10), Article 3607. https://doi.org/10.3390/s22103607
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a widely used technology in automated network systems across the world. The impact of the IoT on different industries has occurred in recent ye...

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...

A Smart and Robust Automatic Inspection of Printed Labels Using an Image Hashing Technique

Journal Article
Khan, M. A., Ahmed, F., Khan, M. D., Ahmad, J., Kumar, H., & Pitropakis, N. (2022)
A Smart and Robust Automatic Inspection of Printed Labels Using an Image Hashing Technique. Electronics, 11(6), Article 955. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11060955
This work is focused on the development of a smart and automatic inspection system for printed labels. This is a challenging problem to solve since the collected labels are ty...

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...

Pre-Napier Funded Projects

  • SECANT (European Commission)

Current Post Grad projects

Previous Post Grad projects