Edinburgh Napier University

Cyber Security at Edinburgh Napier

Edinburgh Napier University has been a leading hub for cyber security research and teaching for over a decade. Find out more about the different ways in which we are innovating at the forefront of this essential field.

  • Our pioneering Masters was among the first of its kind in the UK, established in 2010 as MSc Advanced Security & Digital Forensics and now named MSc Cyber Security. The programme is certified by the National Centre for Cyber Security, and can be studied full-time, part-time or fully online. It’s since been joined by our undergraduate degree, BEng Cybersecurity & Forensics.
  • Both our teachers and researchers are experts in the field, with years of experience and many exciting innovations created from within our walls. Gordon Russell developed LinuxZoo, a virtual lab to help with teaching, and Bill Buchanan founded the Blockpass Identity Lab, a team which focuses of areas of digital identity and cryptography.  
  • We are one of only two Universities in Scotland recognised as a Centre of Academic Excellence for Cybersecurity Education by the National Centre for Cyber Security, reflecting the prestige of our courses, the impact of our outreach and the passion of our staff.  
  • We are home to the Centre for Cybersecurity, Internet of Things & Cyberphysical Systems, which produces internationally leading research and spin-outs which highlight the way we translate research ideas into things that make a real difference in our world.  
  • Our successful spin out companies are impacting the world, from helping to detect illegal content online to sharing data securely internationally.    

Our courses

As the demand for trained professionals with the expertise to enter the field of cyber security grows, our teaching of the subject has also grown to fit student needs. We providing the skills and knowledge needed to succeed at different stages, and in different models, but  always to the highest standard.

We were made an Academic Centre for Excellence by the National Cyber Security Centre, and in 2024 achieved our Gold award, making us one of only 2 institutions in Scotland and 11 in the UK to do so. 

Our undergraduate and postgraduate courses are also certified by the National Cyber Security Centre, meaning students can be sure their education will meet the standards of the industry. Our teaching is underpinned by our research and informed by external partners in law enforcement, the cyber security industry, financial institutions and other knowledge transfer activities.

Undergraduate courses 

BEng (Hons) Cybersecurity & Forensics

Postgraduate courses 

MSc Cyber Security (Full-time)
MSc Cyber Security (Part-time) 
MSc Cyber Security (Distance learning)

Graduate apprenticeships 

BEng (Hons) Cybersecurity (Graduate Apprenticeship) 
MSc Cyber Security (Graduate Apprenticeship)

Facilities

At Edinburgh Napier University, we offer state-of-the-art facilities to support our cyber security students. These consist of physical spaces with powerful computers, where students meet, collaborate and learn together at our Merchiston campus. We also offer students the chance to use virtual learning environments, so students can gain hands-on skills in the latest technology in a safe and controlled space.  

Virtual Learning Environments  

vSoC (Virtual Security Operations Centre) 
Our uniquely designed Virtual Security Operations Centre (VSOC) mimics the real-life SOC environment. Through the virtualised system, students can safely identify real world risks and explore tools and techniques in scenarios including exploitation, malware, insider threats and data loss.   

LinuxZoo 
LinuxZoo is a unique environment developed to provide temporary virtualised infrastructure including servers, networks, and desktop machines on demand to students. Users gain access to a set of virtual computers and networks dedicated to that user, which are built dynamically as required. This is like a hands-on traditional computer lab, where resource is allocated to each user for the duration of a lab session, but here the resource from the user’s viewpoint is completely cloud-based.  

On Campus spaces 

SOCLab 
The Security Operations Centre Lab facility (SOCLab) is a training and teaching facility, located at our Merchiston campus. It incorporates real world security operations using playbooks, incident response, and many other areas relevant to industry and law enforcement.   
 

C27 CyberLab  
The Cyber Lab on our Merchiston campus has 50 computers available for students to use. It’s used as a teaching space, and a general hub for cyber security students to carry out practical learning activities, either in a group or individually. 

News & Achievements 

Having been at the forefront of cyber security research and education for over a decade, Edinburgh Napier has a wealth of achievements in the field. From winning awards in our specific industry at the Cyber Awards, to the Higher Education Industry’s top awards, our teaching and impact has been recognised across the board. Our spin outs have also been making an impact beyond our walls and garnering attention and engagement. 

 

Our Staff 

 
At Edinburgh Napier University our faculty includes award-winning professionals and leading researchers who are at the forefront of cybersecurity innovation.

 

Bill Buchanan

Bill Buchanan

Bill was awarded an OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List in June 2017, making him the first person in the UK to receive an award for services to Cybersecurity. In April 2024, Buchanan was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE). His main research focus is applied cryptography, digital privacy/trust, and digital identity. Bill’s work has led to many UK/World-wide patents, and three highly successful spin-out companies: Zonefox (zonefox.com); Symphonic (symphonicsoft.com); Cyacomb (cyanforensics.com). 
 Petra Leimich

 

Dr Petra Leimich

Petra is the leader for the Graduate Apprenticeship MSc in Cyber Security, Petra is a Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) and an active researcher. Her growing reputation in the area of cloud forensics led to an invitation to speak at the ScotSecure Summit in February 2020. Her current research interests focus on the areas of Digital Forensic Triage, Big Data, Cloud and Distributed Systems Forensics and Incident Response (IR).   
 Gordon Russell

Dr Gordon Russell 

Gordon has been involved with the development of our Cybersecurity degree programmes here at Edinburgh Napier, including MSc Cyber Security and particularly its online format. His current research work investigates decrypting messages using keys extracted from active virtual machines, forensic triage techniques to improve the speed of forensics analysis, and detecting cyber attacks on industrial systems including public water supplies.
 Nick Pitropakis

Dr Nick Pitropakis

Nick is a core member of the Blockpass Identity Lab. Dr Pitropakis has a strong research background in attacks against machine learning. His current research interests include adversarial machine learning, trust and privacy using distributed ledger technology, advanced cyber attack attribution, and data science applied to cyber security and IoT device security. He is currently leading the Horizon Europe project Trust and Privacy-Preserving Computing Platform for Crossborder Federation of Personal Data (TRUSTEE) and has worked on the latest Edinburgh Napier spin out, TrueDeploy. 
 Rich MacFarlane

Rich MacFarlane

Rich has been working in the areas of cyber security and digital forensics since 2009. Rich played a key role in the creation and development of the GCHQ certified MSc Cyber Security and leading the course from 2014. He has worked on developing online teaching platforms which provide students with virtualised practical learning environments, such as vSOC.

Talks & Events

  
We are a thriving community of cyber security professional and students, with a broad network spanning the industry. We therefore host a range of events, from getting world-renowned experts on our campus to share their unique perspectives with our students, to sharing the world of cyber security and its many challenges and opportunities with schools.
We host annual events like expert talks, summer workshops, Christmas lectures, and Cyber Scotland Connect (CSC), featuring industry and academic speakers. These events provide excellent networking opportunities, enhance employment prospects, enrich teaching, and foster research collaborations. Successful projects, including KTP initiatives, real-world research, and student internships have emerged from these events.

 

Guest lectures 

For both our undergraduate and postgraduate students, we invite some of the world’s leading figures in Cybersecurity to give talks about key issues and the future of the industry. Here are some examples of talks we have hosted over the last few years. 

 

Bruce Schneier  Bruce Schneier is an American cryptographer, computer security professional, privacy specialist, and writer. Bruce gave a talk on understanding privacy and trust in the digital age, exploring encryption concepts such as Public Key Encryption and RSA, analyzing the impact of automation and complexity on cybersecurity, and discussing real-world examples of security failures. 
 Whitfield Diffie  Whitfield Diffie is one of the greatest Computer Scientists ever. He - along with Marty Hellman - was one of the first to propose the usage of public key encryption and co-created the Diffie-Hellman (DH) key exchange method. Overall, the Diffie-Hellman method is still used in virtually every Web connection on the Internet, and has changed from using discrete log methods to elliptic curve methods. In 2015, Whitfield was also awarded the ACM Turing Prize - and which is the Nobel Prize equivalent in Computer Science.
 Troy Hunt Troy is a world-leading cybersecurity professional and spoke to students at Edinburgh Napier University This chat will explore his career and his passion for cybersecurity. 

He created and runs the Have I Been Pwned? Web site, and which contains details of the most significant data breaches on the Internet.  Along with this, he has developed other security tools, such as ASafaWeb, which automated the security analysis of ASP.NET Web sites. Troy is based in Australia and has an extensive blog at https://www.troyhunt.com.     

 

Research

  
Edinburgh Napier University is the top Scottish modern university for both research power and research impact, with 68% of our research assessed as “internationally excellent” or “world leading” in the Research Excellence Framework in 2021. Our research in the field of cyber security contributed significantly to these results, and below you can see some examples of how our cutting-edge research projects are impacting the real world and transforming lives.

Centre for Cybersecurity, IoT & Cyberphysical Systems

Explore our internationally leading research and its impact.

Our spin-outs  

Many of our research projects have spun out into start ups, demonstrating the impact and real world applications of what we do. Edinburgh Napier is now a top 10 UK university for spin outs, and second in Scotland.

TrueDeploy 

TrueDeploy helps enterprises improve their software security and protect privacy through innovative distributed ledger and Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) technology.  The project is led by Pavlos Papadopoulos, who graduated from our MSc Cyber Security, and received his PhD in Privacy-Preserving Systems around Security, Trust and Identity from Edinburgh Napier University. He was awarded the “Outstanding Young Person in Cyber” award at the Scottish Cyber Awards 2022.   
Mr Papadopoulos said: “Our solution helps multiple customer segments, including government and defence, regulated industries in finance and healthcare, and even smaller technology start-ups. We want everyone across the software supply chain to feel more secure about the software that is driving their organisation.” The project recieved funding from Scottish Enterprise, and launched in 2023. 

ZoneFox  

ZoneFox is a multi-award-winning cyber security start-up founded and developed by Jamie Graves. He graduated in 2005 with a BEng (Hons) Computer Networks & Distributed Systems, working in his final year on a project with Professor Bill Buchanan OBE to build a network that would respond to attacks in a similar way to a human immune system. This developed into a PhD, and eventually spun out into Zonefox, a cloud-based security platform which prevents malicious attacks on an organisation’s IT network. It was acquired by California-based Fortinet Inc in 2018.   

Cyacomb 

Cyacomb is a spin-out company from Edinburgh Napier University that has been set-up in response to the growing threat of cybercrime and the need to detect illegal content at speed. The company was originally based on the PhD research work of Edinburgh Napier MSc graduate Phil Penrose into forensic triage. The triage work was started as Phil’s Masters dissertation project on the first cohort of the course in 2009. 
Cyacomb now partners with Police Scotland, who use its ground-breaking tools to rigorously scan digital content at scale, finding and flagging harmful content while protecting database security and user privacy. Using cutting edge block level hashing technology, it replaces slow MD5 scans, detecting indecent images of children or terrorist material in seconds, enabling law enforcement to evidence up to 100x faster than traditional methods, saving time while on scene. 

Horizon-Trustee  

Utilizing Self-Sovereign technologies and with State-of-the-Art homomorphic encryption, TRUSTEE offers a socially and environmental-aware framework for cross discipline federation of Data. At its core is the usage of homomorphic encryption which protects the privacy of data while it is used within data processing. The technology has a wide range of applications, from how supporting the ISS for research and space missions, to supporting clinical research and healthcare process improvement. It also has uses in the automotive, education and energy industries. 

ENUSEC 

 

Founded in 2015 by Rich Macfarlane and the students from Edinburgh Napier University's cybersecurity courses, focuses on all aspects of security. With over 120 active members, ENUSEC provides an outlet for learning, understanding, and fostering a friendly community. The society has a strong record of attending, presenting, hosting, and competing at global events. While closely linked to the university, ENUSEC's events and membership are open to everyone, regardless of affiliation.

 

Le Tour Du Hack

 
Each year, ENUSEC run Le Tour Du Hack, their flagship event, organised by and for Edinburgh Napier University students. The first day of the conference consists of student and expert talks, with 2024’s event including talks on AI regulation, deepfakes, compliance, risk exposure and more. The second day is a Capture The Flag event, where teams solve a number of challenges to find a hidden piece of information somewhere in the environment.