Centre of Expertise Cyber Security
The importance of digital security has become indispensable for the world we live in. The mission of the Centre of Expertise Cyber Security is to strengthen the cyber resilience of public and private organisations that are themselves less equipped to deal with cyber threats. Cyber resilience represents the ability of organisations to recognise cyber threats and respond to them appropriately. The focus on cyber resilience stems from the observation that organisations will all have to deal with cyber incidents sooner or later and therefore need to focus not only on preventive measures, but also, for example, on detection and response.
In order to gain a better understanding of how to realise cyber resilience, our research focuses on three sub-areas:
- People: which behavioural and attitudinal aspects influence cyber resilience and how can organisations improve these aspects for cyber resilience?
- Organisation: which organisational aspects influence cyber resilience and how can organisations improve these aspects for cyber resilience?
- Technology: which technical aspects influence cyber resilience and how can organisations improve these aspects for cyber resilience?
Since its establishment in 2015, the Centre of Expertise Cyber Security has grown rapidly, and a great deal of practice-oriented research has been completed. We remain committed to sustaining previous successes and creating synergies between practice-oriented research, education and professional practice.
Research groups
Research Group Cyber Security and Safety
Article
Information security education based on job profiles and the e-CF
Research Group Risk Management & Cyber Security
Article
Cyber crises require anticipation and improvisation
Article
Leading a cyber incident response team
Research Group Network and Systems Engineering Cyber Security
Thesis
Secure Naming for Distributing Computing using the Condensed Graph Model
Article
Cloud-Based Intelligence Aquisition and Processing for Crisis Management
Thesis
Secure Naming for Distributing Computing using the Condensed Graph Model
Implementing a distributed computation architecture has several basis functional requirements, such as load balancing, fault tolerance and security. The challenge is in how you manage these requirements as a whole. Security is a specific problem in that it is made up of a number of important aspects, such as confidentiality, integrity and availability. Each of these aspects is vital in a distributed system.One important aspect of security is access control. The central premise of this thesis is: “If you can name it, you can control access to it”.This dissertation examines the security requirements of the WebCom distributed computing environment and develops the security architecture for WebCom, primarily to provide a systematic access control mechanism for condensed graph applications.The flexibility of this architecture is demonstrated with a number of case studies, including a micropayment architecture for distributed computations, an automated administration architecture for Grid and an activity based secure workflow architecture.
T.B. Quillinan. Secure Naming for Distributing Computing using the Condensed Graph Model. Ph.D. Thesis. University College Cork, Cork, Ireland. July 2006.
Article
Cloud-Based Intelligence Aquisition and Processing for Crisis Management
Contemporary crisis management has to deal with complex socio-technical environments involving many interdependent elements. Many dependencies in such settings result in complex cascading processes that can have adverse effects on the population, environment, and economy. Adequate situation awareness and the capability to
predict the development of a crisis situation under different circumstances is a critical element of effective, and timely, crisis management and response.
de Oude, Patrick; Pavlin, Gregor; Quillinan, Thomas; Jeraj, Julij, and Abouhafc, Abdelhaq. (2017). Cloud-Based Intelligence Aquisition and Processing for Crisis Management. 133-153. 10.1007/978-3-319-52419-1_9
Team
dr. Rutger Leukfeldt
Professor Cybercrime & Cybersecurity
dr. Marcel Spruit
Professor Cyber Security & Safety
dr. Pei-Hui Lin
Professor Risk Management & Cyber Security
dr. Mathias Björkqvist
dr. Ligaya Butalid
Secretary Centre of Expertise Cyber Security
dr. Nicole van Deursen
Céline Kreffer
Emiel Kerpershoek
dr. ir. Pieter Burghouwt
dr. Susanne van ‘t Hoff – de Goede
dr. Rick van der Kleij
dr. ir. Marinus Maris
Sifra Matthijsse
Asier Moneva Pardo
Raoul José Notté MA MSc
Deborah Oosting MSc
Marco Romagna LLM MA
Luuk Bekkers
Maaike Vergeer
Joeri Loggen
Saman Barjas
Michael Gilhespy
Daniel Meinsma
Bernard van der Helm
Merel van Leuken
Maaike van der Wal
Jasmijn Boeken
Professor Cybercrime & Cybersecurity
dr. Rutger Leukfeldt
Rutger is the lector Cybercrime & Cybersecurity at The Hague University of Applied Sciences and senior researcher of cybercrime and coordinator of the cybercrime cluster at The Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR). He has more than 10 years of experience with scientific research into cybersecurity and cybercrime for both public and private clients. A few examples are research into the methods used and the characteristics of cyber criminals, into the victims of cybercrime among citizens and into the status of cybercrime cases in the criminal law system. Rutger earned his PhD with a study into the origin and growth processes, as well as criminal possibilities of cybercrime networks, and developed a model for the police and banks that can be used to more effectively combat cyber attacks. Rutger has also been the recipient of two prestigious research grants to conduct research into cybercrime. In 2015, he earned the Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (EU subsidy for promising researchers) and, in 2017, a Veni Grant (Netherlands Initiative for Education Research subsidy for talented researchers). Finally, Rutger is chairman of the Cybercrime Working Group of the European Society of Criminology.
e.r.leukfeldt@hhs.nlProfessor Cyber Security & Safety
dr. Marcel Spruit
Marcel Spruit boasts many years of experience in information and cyber security. He is responsible for research into cyber security and the development of education in this field and is personally and intensely involved in both the research and education development. Marcel is affiliated with the PBLQ consultancy firm as a senior consultant, where he provides advice on organisational aspects, especially the topics of information and cyber security. He also carries out audits, second opinions and security studies. Prior to his appointment as head of the research group, Marcel worked on quality assurance at Fokker Space and as a senior lecturer for the Information Systems department at the Delft University of Technology, where he specialised in information security, human failure and the organisation of security.
m.e.m.spruit@hhs.nlProfessor Risk Management & Cyber Security
dr. Pei-Hui Lin
Starting from 2016, Pei-Hui furthered her career in cyber security industry. She worked at European Network for Cyber Security (ENCS), where she was responsible for improving cyber security for the European smart grid operators. After that, Pei-Hui worked as a lead evaluator at SGS Brightsight. She led a team to perform cyber security evaluations in hardware and software on various types of IT devices. Pei-Hui has more than 15 years of experience in conducting practice-oriented research into safety and security problems.
dr. Mathias Björkqvist
Secretary Centre of Expertise Cyber Security
dr. Ligaya Butalid
dr. ir. Pieter Burghouwt
dr. Susanne van ‘t Hoff – de Goede
dr. Rick van der Kleij
Senior Researcher of Human Behavior and Organizational Innovations at TNO and Associate Professor of Cybersecurity in SMEs at THUAS
Rick van der Kleij is a psychologist with a PhD in occupational and organisational psychology, senior researcher in the research group and at the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO). He has more than 20 years of experience in conducting high-quality applied research on socially relevant issues within the realm of security. His research on cybersecurity focuses on ways to make companies more resilient to cyber attacks. A resilient organisation has the capacity to respond adequately to cyber incidents and can also, in many cases, prevent problems from arising.
dr. ir. Marinus Maris
Sifra Matthijsse
Asier Moneva Pardo
Raoul José Notté MA MSc
Deborah Oosting MSc
Marco Romagna LLM MA
Marco Romagna is lecturer in ‘Legal and criminological aspects of cyber security’ and researcher for the Centre of Expertise Cyber Security within the Faculty of IT & Design. He is external PhD candidate at Leiden University with a project on “Hacktivism: honorable cause and/or serious threat?”. Before joining the Centre, Marco was an intern at eCrime (Trento University), Cyber Security Academy (The Hague) and Eurojust and he worked as digital commerce fraud analyst at Nike. Marco holds an LLM in Laws (Trento University) and an MA in Global Criminology (Utrecht University). Beside hacktivism and cyber security, his main research interests focus on cybercrime, criminology and the related criminal law. Marco follows with particular attention new developments in technology especially when linked with legal challenges.
m.romagna@hhs.nlLuuk Bekkers
Maaike Vergeer
Saman Barjas
Michael Gilhespy
Daniel Meinsma
Bernard van der Helm
Merel van Leuken
Merel van Leuken studied Criminology and Applied Psychology. She obtained a master's degree in Investigative Criminology at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and has been working as a junior researcher at the Cybercrime & Cybersecurity research group since April 2022. Previously, she worked as a Customer Due Diligence analyst at Deloitte. She is currently evaluating a preventive intervention aimed at juvenile cyber offenders.
Maaike van der Wal
Maaike studeerde Criminologie aan de Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam en behaalde een master in Forensische Criminologie aan de Universiteit van Leiden. Sinds april 2022 is zij als junior onderzoeker verbonden aan het kenniscentrum Cyber Security van de Haagse Hogeschool, waar zij zich met name bezighoudt met onderzoeken over cyberweerbaarheid. Voor haar aanstelling bij de Haagse Hogeschool was zij werkzaam als Digitaal Forensisch onderzoeker en Cybersecurity Consultant bij Digital Investigation.