Associate Professor of Cyber Security – University of Oxford
I have over 20 years’ experience in teaching and undertaking academic research in the area of computer security, in particular exploring how secure systems can be designed, implemented, and tested to take human needs into account.
Early on, this research focused on the importance of software development processes for achieving usable secure software. This is to address a twofold problem: the importance of designing usable security mechanisms, and the difficulty that developers experience when faced with the development of secure systems. Key outcomes of this research have contributed insights gained from combining three separate disciplines: Human-Computer Interaction, Software Engineering, and Information Security.
More recently, the problem of understanding the context of use in which systems are to operate has been a key interest: particularly the importance of understanding the social, technical, and communal implications of non-corporate environments on digital security (such as shadow IT, gig working, or smart homes).
Understanding and navigating the ethical challenges of multi-cultural situations is a core part of this research. Among other issues, this work has highlighted that unfair power dynamics can be reflected in technology use, and raises important questions about the role that AI technologies can play in identifying, mediating, and challenging unfair practices across the world.
