From Little Acorns Do Mighty Oaks Grow: The Data Science of Cyber Security

One of the great things of being in academia, is that you have the chance to grow seeds that can become might oaks. And so in June, Dr Owen Lo and I start on a new road. After asecuritysite.com (with over three million visitors per year) and the Bright Red Digital Zone (with over 120K registered users and being currently used by tens of thousands pupils in Scotland for the N5/Higher/Advanced Higher exams), we embark on a new route.

With Data Labs funding, we are now creating a Mooc related to the Data Science of Cyber Security. If there’s one area of our economy which needs Data Science, it is Cyber Security, and we need our future data scientists to be more security-aware, and our cyber security professionals to have the tools to find ‘a pin-prick on the moon’.

Owen and I worked on the Digital Zone, and we are up for the challenge of creating an immersive environment for learning Data Science for Cybersecurity. It will integrate Python into a browser, and be supported by videos, challenges, and even with a book. We now have open source tools at our fingertips, and we are going to use them. At the core, must be deep learning.