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Centre of Expertise Cyber Security

Cyber Security and Safety Research Group

Cybersecurity in the SME Sector Research Group

Research group Risk Management & Cyber Security

Research group Network and Systems Engineering Cyber Security

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About
The focus of THUAS’ Centre of Expertise Cyber Security (CoECS), created in 2015, is on helping those organisations that lack sufficient expertise to protect themselves from and become more resilient to cyber threats. The Centre has a strong (inter)national network. It conducts high quality research on various cyber security themes, involving its research groups, professors, researchers and students. The CoECS is also involved in the development of various educational programs and Master courses inside as well as outside The Hague University of Applied Sciences.

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News
Publications

Cybersecurity in the SME Sector Research Group

Article

Examining the Social Organization Practices of Cybercriminals in the Netherlands Online and Offline

This study focuses on the organization practices of networks of cybercriminals engaged in serious financial offenses, through a qualitative analysis of the Best and Luckenbill’s sociological framework. The study utilized data collected regarding 18 separate criminals investigations from the Netherlands. The results demonstrate that the participants within these networks operated at various stages of deviant sophistication.

Article

Money talks money laundering choices of organized crime offenders in a digital age

In this explorative study we provide empirical insight into how organized crime offenders use IT to launder their money. Our empirical data consist of 30 large-scale criminal investigations into organized crime. These cases are part of the most recent, fifth data sweep of the Dutch Organized Crime Monitor (DOCM). We do not focus on cybercrime alone. Instead, we explore the financial aspects of criminal operations in a broad range of types of organized crime, i.e. from ‘traditional’ types of organized crime, such as offline drug smuggling, to cybercrime.

Research group Risk Management & Cyber Security

Article

Cyber crises require anticipation and improvisation

The ransomware attack on Maastricht University (2019) and the wiperware attack on Maersk (2017) painfully demonstrated that major incidents cannot be prevented and can even turn into cyber crises. The extent to which organisations can limit the impact of cyber crises is determined, among other things, by their business continuity and crisis management. How do you adequately organise these control measures, however?

Article

Leading a cyber incident response team

Jelle Groenendaal and Ira Helsloot present a model of cyber incident command that aims to support leaders by providing practical and applicable insights into decision-making under challenging conditions.
Team

Team

dr. Rutger Leukfeldt

Professor Cyber Security in the SME sector

dr. Ligaya Butalid

Secretary Centre of Expertise Cyber Security

dr. Mathias Björkqvist

dr. Jelle Groenendaal

Professor Risk Management & Cyber Security

dr. Marcel Spruit

Professor Cyber Security & Safety

dr. ir. Pieter Burghouwt

dr. Susanne van ‘t Hoff – de Goede

dr. Rick van der Kleij

Lisa de Kok

dr. ir. Marinus Maris

Asier Moneva Pardo

Raoul José Notté MA MSc

Deborah Oosting MSc

Marco Romagna LLM MA

Jim Schiks

Luuk Bekkers

Maaike Vergeer

Professor Cyber Security in the SME sector

dr. Rutger Leukfeldt

Rutger is the lector of the Cybersecurity in the SME sector 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.nl

Secretary Centre of Expertise Cyber Security

dr. Ligaya Butalid

Ligaya Butalid is the manager of the Centre of Expertise Cyber Security. With a background in health psychology she studied the importance of empathy in medical care. She finished her PhD at NIVEL / Utrecht University with a study on doctor-patient communication in general practice. Furthermore, she is experienced in programme management and previously worked at research funding organizations such as ZonMw and the Dutch Research Council (Regieorgaan SIA / NWO) and at the department Education, Knowledge and Communication of THUAS. 
l.butalid@hhs.nl

dr. Mathias Björkqvist

Mathias Björkqvist is a lector of Network and Systems Cyber Security at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, and a security researcher at Thales Research and Technology Nederland. Prior to joining Thales, he spent 12 years at IBM Research - Zurich, working on storage security, encryption key management, and blockchain. Mathias completed his MSc in computer networking at the Helsinki University of Technology (now Aalto University), during which time he also studied for a year at Institut Eurécom in Sophia-Antipolis, France. He later obtained his PhD on resource management of replicated service systems in the cloud, from the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano. Mathias' research interests include key management and security for distributed systems, and security of embedded and IoT devices.
m.a.bjorkqvist@hhs.nl

Professor Risk Management & Cyber Security

dr. Jelle Groenendaal

Jelle Groenendaal started his professional career at Crisislab, a research group connected to the Radboud University Nijmegen specializing in physical safety, risk and crisis management. After obtaining his Ph.D. on frontline management and incident command within the police and fire service (Radboud University Nijmegen), he joined Deloitte and advised multinationals on cyber resilience and business continuity management. He then transferred to ING Bank and worked within the Cybercrime Expertise & Response Team (CERT) as an incident and crisis manager. The last two years at ING, he was responsible worldwide for business continuity and crisis management.
j.groenendaal@hhs.nl

Professor 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.nl

Lisa de Kok

Contact:

l.c.dekok@hhs.nl

Asier Moneva Pardo

Asier Moneva Pardo is a postdoctoral researcher in the field of the Human Factor in Cybercrime at the Hague University of Applied Sciences and the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement. With a background in Criminology, he obtained his PhD on the applicability of the Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis framework to crime committed in cyberspace at Miguel Hernandez University of Elche (Spain). His research focuses on cybercrime analysis and prevention from a situational perspective through quantitative methods.
a.monevapardo@hhs.nl

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.nl