Rich Macfarlane
Rich Macfarlane

Rich Macfarlane

Associate Professor

Biography

Rich Macfarlane is an Associate Professor in the School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University, working in the areas of cyber security and digital forensics since 2009. Rich played a key role in the creation and development of the GCHQ certified MSc Advanced Security and Digital Forensics programme (www.napier.ac.uk/courses/msc-advanced-security-and-digital-forensics-postgraduate-fulltime) and leading the course from 2014. Rich also collaborates with law enforcement, and industry within the Cyber Academy (thecyberacademy.org), which he co-founded with Prof. Bill Buchanan.

Working within the Networking, Cyber Security and Digital Forensics research group, and focused on research in the areas of Offensive Network Security, Ransomware, Digital Forensic Triage, and Online teaching and E-learning for cyber security. Research in teaching for cyber has focused on authentic, immersive virtualised environments and activities, as well as online learning pedagogy. Digital forensic research included techniques for triage which led to a ground breaking Forensic spin-out company Cyan Forensics (cyanforensics.com). Current research in offensive-security includes honeypots for attack analysis, and Ransomware analysis and detection methods including forensic triage of live memory.

Rich is a Senior Teaching Fellow of HEA, and has played a key part in developing the cyber security offering at Edinburgh Napier University including developing online teaching platforms which provide students with virtualised practical learning environments, such as vSOC. Based on student-centered teaching and learning for cyber security and digital investigations these provide authentic practical activities even to our remote students. Rich helped start and continues to support the ENUSEC student cyber security society at the university (enusec.org).

Rich is also heavily involved with the wider cyber security community, especially in Scotland, such as as working with schools to support cyber security engagement and teaching, and helping to start and his current moderator role with the Cyber Scotland Connect (@SecScotland) community organisation. He is also an active member of the NCSC educational community group which is made up of course and research lab leaders from NCSC accredited institutions.

News

Events

Esteem

Editorial Activity

  • Editorial Board - Journal of Cyber Security Technology

 

Fellowships and Awards

  • Senior Teaching Fellow of the HEA

 

Spin-outs and Licences

  • Cyan Forensics

 

Date


35 results

D-FET – A community cloud for enhancing skills using virtualised environments and cloud-based infrastructures.

Presentation / Conference
Buchanan, W. J., & Macfarlane, R. (2011, June)
D-FET – A community cloud for enhancing skills using virtualised environments and cloud-based infrastructures. Paper presented at Scottish Higher Education Employability Conference: Strengthening Partnerships with Employers, Heriot-Watt, Edinburgh
The use of virtualised and cloud-based environments provide an excellent opportunity to enhance learning and to provide students with skills which match exactly to the require...

An integrated firewall policy validation tool

Thesis
Macfarlane, R. (2009)
An integrated firewall policy validation tool. (Thesis). Edinburgh Napier University. Retrieved from http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/id/eprint/3971
Security policies are increasingly being implemented by organisations. Policies are mapped to device configurations to enforce the policies. This is typically performed manual...

A methodology to evaluate rate-based intrusion prevention system against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS).

Conference Proceeding
Buchanan, W. J., Flandrin, F., Macfarlane, R. & Graves, J. (2010)
A methodology to evaluate rate-based intrusion prevention system against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS). In Cyberforensics 2011
This paper defines a methodology for the evaluation of a Rate-based Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) for a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) threat. This evaluation system...

Student perception of on-line lectures with a blended learning environment.

Conference Proceeding
Buchanan, W. J., Macfarlane, R. & Ludwiniak, R. (2010)
Student perception of on-line lectures with a blended learning environment
Educational institutions are increasingly moving towards enhancing learning through the use of integrated information technology. Blended, or augmented, learning, aims to supp...

A forensic image description language for generating test images.

Conference Proceeding
Russell, G., Macfarlane, R. & Ludwiniak, R. (2011)
A forensic image description language for generating test images. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Cybercrime Forensics Education & TrainingISBN 978-1-899253-94-4
Digital Forensics is a fast developing job market, as well as being topical and interesting, and as such is an area in which University students are keen to develop and study....

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