Debi Ashenden

Debi is Professor of Cyber Security in the School of Computing at the University of Portsmouth.  Debi has been working in the field of cyber security for 20 years.  Prior to taking up her post at Portsmouth she spent 12 years at Cranfield University at the Defence Academy of the UK, Shrivenham.  Her final post at Shrivenham was as Head of the Centre for Cyber Security.  Prior to becoming an academic she was a Managing Consultant at QinetiQ (formerly the Defence Evaluation Research Agency). Debi’s research interests are in the social and behavioural aspects of cyber security – particularly in finding ways of ‘patching with people’ rather than technology.  She focuses on building security dialogues between communities.  Debi has worked extensively across the public and private sector and has co-authored a book for Butterworth Heinemann, Risk Management for Computer Security: Protecting Your Network & Information Assets. She is the Programme Director for Protective Security & Risk at the Centre for Research & Evidence for Security Threats (CREST - www.crestresearch.ac.uk).  CREST is a research hub funded by UK Government through ESRC. She is also currently a PI on the EPSRC project Cyber Security Across the Life Span (cSALSA) and an academic fellow at the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (www.ncsc.gov.uk).

Debi’s research interests are in the social and behavioural aspects of cyber security – particularly in finding ways of ‘patching with people’ rather than technology.  She focuses on building security dialogues between communities.  She is the Programme Director for Protective Security & Risk at the Centre for Research & Evidence for Security Threats (CREST - www.crestresearch.ac.uk).  CREST is a research hub funded by UK Government through ESRC. She is also currently a PI on the EPSRC project Cyber Security Across the Life Span (cSALSA).