We are pleased to announce a joint workshop hosted by Durham and Bristol universities, with sponsorship from RISCS, dedicated to exploring best practice in cybersecurity governance. This event will convene leading experts to address the evolving regulatory challenges and ethical considerations within the field.
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Art Work by Prasun Basu
Through this workshop, we will bring together experts from academia, industry, policymakers, and the third sector to explore best practices for stakeholder collaboration in cybersecurity governance. Specifically, the discussion will examine how to optimise a co-regulatory approach to create an effective and proactive framework that integrates the strengths of legal enforcement with stakeholder engagement. By fostering continuous dialogue and internalising the inherent tensions in regulatory decision-making, this workshop aims to provide the framework in which cybersecurity regulations can evolve in response to both practical challenges and ethical considerations.
PGR Meet
We are hosting a PGR meet on 23rd September, ahead of the main workshop on 24th September. This is an invitation-only event. Interested students should submit a 500-word abstract to the email addresses of the chairs (below) to be considered for an invitation. RISCS will cover the attendance of invited students at the workshop on the 24th.
Chairs
Dr. Rebecca Owens rebecca.owens@durham.ac.uk
Research Associate in AI Law, Durham University
Associate Fellow Research Institute in Socio-Technical Security (RISCS) (2024 – 2025)
Dr. Rebecca Owens is a Research Associate in AI Law at Durham University, where she plays a key role in the multidisciplinary Horizon Europe ENCIRCLE project, providing legal, ethical, and social insights into the regulation of artificial intelligence and contributing to the development of sustainable supply chains. Her research focuses on the regulation of emerging technologies, with particular emphasis on promoting transparency and safeguarding fundamental rights within socio-technical systems. Prior to this, Dr. Owens was a Research Associate at Newcastle University, where she contributed to the EPSRC-funded AGENCY project, which developed legal and corporate responses to mitigate complex online harms. She holds a PhD in intellectual property and competition law from the University of Liverpool, where she also completed her LLM with Distinction and her LLB. Her academic work has been supported by the John Lennon Memorial Scholarship and the Sir Joseph Rotblat Scholarship, both of which were awarded in recognition of her outstanding academic merit. Recognised as a rising star in the field of socio-technical cybersecurity, Rebecca is a legal technologist who integrates computational social science methods into her research. In collaboration with regulators such as the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), she has co-developed several digital tools designed to enhance citizen empowerment online. Her interdisciplinary research, which combines qualitative and quantitative methodologies, has been published in leading venues across law, business and computer science.
Dr. Partha Das Chowdhury partha.daschowdhury@bristol.ac.uk
Lecturer in Software Security, University of Bristol
Associate Fellow Research Institute in Socio-Technical Security (RISCS) (2024 – 2025)
Dr. Partha Das Chowdhury is Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in software security at University of Bristol. He is also a member of core team of the UKRI National Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence Online (REPHRAIN). Partha advocates a realisation based research paradigm to systems and software security. He pursues two distinct yet interrelated research strands. He leads the development of the testbed operating system (testbedOS) to test application security and privacy properties in a reproducible manner. On the other hand he was the first to propose the adoption of Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach for inclusive security engineering. He led the collaborative work with University of Cambridge that uncovered cloning attacks in Signal and WhatsApp desktop clients. Partha was involved in the evaluation of six safety technologies to detect child sexually abusive material (CSAM) commissioned by GCHQ and the Home Office, UK. He has contributed to UK’s Department of Culture Media and Sports consultation on Security and Privacy settings in Apps and Apps stores on behalf of REPHRAIN. The consultation shaped the regulatory content in this space. He has published in Software Practice and Experience journal, IEEE SecDev, ACM New Security Paradigms Workshop, USENIX PePR, Computer Supported Cooperative Work and the International Security Protocols Workshop held annually at Trinity College, Cambridge. He first authored and co-authored two award winning papers at IEEE SecDev 2024 and ACM CSCW 2023 respectively.
Sponsors
We gratefully acknowledge the support of our sponsor, RISCS, which has made this event possible.
