We have a further “post-doc” position in the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre: https://www.cambridgecybercrime.uk.

We are looking for an enthusiastic researcher to join us to work on our datasets of posts made in “underground forums”. In addition to pursuing their own research interests regarding cybercrime, they will help us achieve a better understanding of the research opportunities that these datasets open up. In particular, we want to focus on establishing what types of tools and techniques will assist researchers (particularly those without a computer science background) to extract value from these enormous sets (10’s of millions of posts) of data. We will also be looking to extend our collection and need help to understand the most useful way to proceed.

We have an open mind as to who we might appoint, but expect that the best candidate will be someone from a sociology or criminology background who already has some experience analysing large datasets relating to cybercrime. The appointee should be looking to develop their own research, but also be prepared to influence how cybercrime research by non-technical researchers can be enabled by effective use of the extremely large datasets that we are making available.

Details of the posts, and what we’re looking for are in the job advert here: http://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/19318/.

We have three open positions in the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre: https://www.cambridgecybercrime.uk.

We wish to fill at least one of the three posts with someone from a computer science, data science, or similar technical background.

BUT we’re not just looking for computer science people: to continue our multi-disciplinary approach, we wish to fill at least one of the three posts with someone from a criminology, sociology, psychology or legal background.

Details of the posts, and what we’re looking for are in the job advert here: http://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/17827/.

The Cambridge Cloud Cybercrime Centre (more information about our vision for this initiative are in this earlier article) has up to three Research Associate / Research Assistant positions to fill.

We are looking for enthusiastic researchers to work with the substantial amounts of cybercrime data that we will be collecting. The people we appoint will have the chance to define their own goals and objectives and pursue them independently or as part of a team. We will also expect everyone to assist with automating the processing of our incoming data feeds and adding value to them.

We are not necessarily looking for existing experience in researching cybercrime, although this would be a bonus. However, we are looking for strong programming skills — and experience with scripting languages and databases would be much preferred. Good knowledge of English and communication skills are important.

Please follow this link to the advert to read the formal advertisement for the details about exactly who and what we’re looking for and how to apply — and please pay attention to our request that in the covering letter you create as part of the application you should explain which particular aspects of cybercrime research are of interest to you.

We have recently won a major grant (around £2 million over 5 years) under the EPSRC Contrails call which we will be using to set up the “Cambridge Cloud Cybercrime Centre”:

https://www.cambridgecybercrime.uk/

The will be a multi-disciplinary initiative combining expertise from the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory, Institute of Criminology and Faculty of Law. We will be operational from 1 October 2015.

Our approach will be data driven. We have already negotiated access to some very substantial datasets relating to cybercrime and we aim to leverage our neutral academic status to obtain more data and build one of the largest and most diverse data sets that any organisation holds.

We will mine and correlate these datasets to extract information about criminal activity. Our analysis will enhance understanding of crime ‘in the cloud’, enable us to devise identifiers of such criminality, allow us to build systems to detect this type of crime when it occurs, and aid us in showing how it is possible to collect extremely reliable evidence of wrongdoing. When it is appropriate, we will work closely with law enforcement so that interventions can be undertaken.

Our overall objective is to create a sustainable and internationally competitive centre for academic research into cybercrime.

Importantly, we will not be keeping all this data to ourselves… a key aim of our Centre is to make data available to other academics for them to apply their own skills to address cybercrime issues.

Academics currently face considerable difficulties in researching cybercrime. It is difficult, and time consuming, to negotiate access to real data on actual abuse and then it is necessary to build and deploy data collection tools before the real work can even be started.

We intend to drive a step change in the amount of cybercrime research by making datasets available, not just of URLs but content as well, so that other academics can concentrate on their particular areas of expertise and start being productive immediately. These datasets will be both ‘historic’ and, where appropriate ‘real-time’.

We will maintain high ethical standards in everything we do and will develop a strong legal framework for our operations. In particular we will always ensure that the data we handle is treated fully in accord with the spirit, and not just the letter, of the agreements we enter into.

We will shortly be hiring for the first few research positions … pointers to the job adverts will appear on this blog.