Debi Ashenden

Ashenden (CI) is Professor of Cybersecurity at the University of Adelaide where she holds the DST Group-University of Adelaide Joint Chair in Cybersecurity. She has a twenty-year career in cybersecurity as a Government Scientist (UK MOD) and academic. Her academic research training and experience spans social and behavioural science, and computer science, making her uniquely placed to run a transdisciplinary research project of this nature.

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In addition, Ashenden advises DST Group on transdisciplinary approaches within the Modelling Complex Warfighting Programme. Ashenden has an international reputation in cybersecurity and has the ability to build strong,

collaborative partnerships between academics as well as between academics and the national intelligence and security community. Between 2015 and 2020 she was Programme Director for Protective Security & Risk at the Centre for Research & Evidence for Security Threats (CREST). CREST is a research hub funded by the UK Intelligence Agencies through ESRC. She remains an academic fellow at the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).

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Ashenden is co-author of the book, Risk Management for Computer Security: Protecting Your Network & Information Assets. She maintains a fractional post as Professor of Cybersecurity at the University of Portsmouth in the UK where she currently has two UK EPSRC grants (EPSRC grant EP/P011667/1 and EPSRC grant EP/R033382/1) and where, on the latter grant, she mentors junior colleagues running their first three-year grant programme. She continues to mentor ECRs in both the UK and Australia and she is an experienced supervisor of transdisciplinary PhD projects.