Research Group Cybercrime & Cybersecurity
Cybercrime is an acute and increasingly common problem. Combatting it requires fundamental scientific research, but also applied practical research. The research group Cybercrime & Cybersecurity is committed to applying practical means to help SMEs, (local) governments and public organizations in the Netherlands become more digitally safe and aware with the support of evidence-based high-quality research.
SMEs, (local) governments and public organisations often lack the capacity to defend themselves against cyber-attacks and therefore fall victim to these relatively often. The Cybercrime and Cybersecurity research group (known as ‘Cybersecurity in SMEs’ until December 2021) is focused on increasing knowledge of cybercrime and cybersecurity within SMEs, government bodies and public organisations to reduce the number of victims and the impact of cyber-attacks. The research activities, under the leadership of Dr. Rutger Leukfeldt, target the following research areas: 1) the nature and scope of victimisation, 2) the nature of cyber criminality, 3) cyber resilience, and 4) the approach.
SMEs, (local) governments and public organisations are eager for useful knowledge, which is affirmed by Mkb-Nederland and VNO-NCW. This encouraged the NSCR and The Hague University of Applied Sciences to set up the joint practice-based research programme Cybercrime & Cybersecurity. Dr. Rutger Leukfeldt is the common link between the two organisations. He is a professor at THUAS and has been appointed as senior researcher and coordinator of the cybercrime cluster at the NSCR.
The research group’s complete research agenda is available here.
Name change of research group - previously ‘Cybersecurity in SMEs’
As of January 2022, the research group will continue under the new name ‘Cybercrime & Cybersecurity’ as the previous name ‘Cybersecurity in SMEs’ no longer encompasses the current research programme. Together with our partners we believe that the social relevance of the research areas will remain evident in the coming years: there is a growing need to develop practical knowledge about cybercrime and cybersecurity. This need for knowledge is not only experienced by SMEs but also by (local) governments and public organisations. The research group is also part of the Cybersecurity Centre of Expertise and other research groups within the centre of expertise will also focus on this target group of (local) government and SMEs. The joint research group focuses on three pillars: people, organisation and technology. Unlike the other research groups and research organisations of our knowledge partners, the research group ‘Cybercrime & Cybersecurity’ has unique expertise on the human factors of cybersecurity and cybercrime.
Team
dr. Susanne van ‘t Hoff – de Goede
Asier Moneva Pardo
Marco Romagna LLM MA
Raoul José Notté MA MSc
Michelle Ancher
Luuk Bekkers
Jasmijn Boeken
Sifra Matthijsse
Joeri Loggen
Merel van Leuken
Maaike van der Wal
Taisiia Garkava
Junior Researcher
dr. Susanne van ‘t Hoff – de Goede
Asier Moneva Pardo
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.nlRaoul José Notté MA MSc
Luuk Bekkers
Jasmijn Boeken
Sifra Matthijsse
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.
Junior Researcher
Taisiia Garkava
Taisiia is a Junior Researcher at the Centre of Expertise Cyber Security (CoECS) at The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS) and a Junior Security Analyst at Darktrace. Before becoming a Junior Researcher, Taisiia was an intern at the CoECS. She is interested in everything related to cybercrime, focusing at the moment on hacker marketplaces. Her other areas of interest include cyber threat intelligence, OSINT, threat actors, hacking techniques and cyber warfare.
About the professor
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.nl