Simon Davies
simon davies

Simon Davies C.Eng

Research Student

Biography

Having recently completed a master’s degree in Advanced Security & Digital Forensics at Edinburgh Napier University and achieving a distinction grade level two, I continued on to follow a PhD program at Edinburgh Napier University.

I am a mature student with over 30 years’ experience in the IT industry and up until recently, I have been working as a consultant with a financial software supplier involved in all aspects of financial software development, implementation and maintenance. Prior to this position, I have worked within the IT research and development divisions of several other major companies including Shell and IBM and the Technical Research Centre of Finland.

During the course of countless engagements throughout the years I have been exposed to many different financial systems and company infrastructures and their associated policies and philosophies regarding security. This exposure sparked a keen interest in how companies secured their IT assets and intellectual property and how the balance was made between ease of access and security.


Due to this, I started to research the field of information security and consequently enrolled and completed the master’s course. As a final dissertation project, I became deeply involved in ransomware detection and mitigation techniques, resulting in the development of a novel approach to ransomware mitigation drawing on techniques used in other fields.

I am excited to be continuing to extend my research in this fascinating area.

Esteem

Fellowships and Awards

  • Best paper in school

 

Reviewing

  • Know Thy Ransomware Response: A Detailed Framework for Devising Effective Ransomware Response Strategies
  • Journal Reviewer: IEEE Internet of Things Journal

 

Date


7 results

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 ...

NapierOne: A modern mixed file data set alternative to Govdocs1

Journal Article
Davies, S. R., Macfarlane, R., & Buchanan, W. J. (2022)
NapierOne: A modern mixed file data set alternative to Govdocs1. Forensic Science International: Digital Investigation, 40, Article 301330. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsidi.2021.301330
It was found when reviewing the ransomware detection research literature that almost no proposal provided enough detail on how the test data set was created, or sufficient des...

Exploring the Need For an Updated Mixed File Research Data Set

Conference Proceeding
Davies, S. R., Macfarlane, R., & Buchanan, W. J. (2022)
Exploring the Need For an Updated Mixed File Research Data Set. In 2021 International Conference on Engineering and Emerging Technologies (ICEET) (426-430). https://doi.org/10.1109/iceet53442.2021.9659618
Mixed file data sets are used in a variety of research areas, including Digital Forensics, Malware analysis and Ransomware detection. Researchers recently seem to either have ...

Review of Current Ransomware Detection Techniques

Conference Proceeding
Davies, S. R., Macfarlane, R., & Buchanan, W. J. (2022)
Review of Current Ransomware Detection Techniques. In 2021 International Conference on Engineering and Emerging Technologies (ICEET) (696-701). https://doi.org/10.1109/iceet53442.2021.9659643
A review of proposed ransomware detection tools and techniques. The tools are described, compared and contrasted and possible short comings in their approaches are discussed.

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...

Evaluation of Live Forensic Techniques in Ransomware Attack Mitigation

Journal Article
Davies, S. R., Macfarlane, R., & Buchanan, W. J. (2020)
Evaluation of Live Forensic Techniques in Ransomware Attack Mitigation. Forensic Science International: Digital Investigation, 33, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsidi.2020.300979
Ransomware continues to grow in both scale, cost, complexity and impact since its initial discovery nearly 30 years ago. Security practitioners are engaged in a continual "arm...

Evaluation of Live Forensic Techniques in Ransomware Attack Mitigation

Thesis
Davies, S. (2020)
Evaluation of Live Forensic Techniques in Ransomware Attack Mitigation. (Dissertation). Edinburgh Napier University. Retrieved from http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2875361
Ransomware continues to grow in both scale, cost, complexity and impact since its initial discovery nearly 30 years ago. Security practitioners are engaged in a continual "arm...

Current Post Grad projects