The AI and Cyber Security SIG (AI-Cyber SIG) brings together UK academics, industry partners, and early-career researchers to address the growing intersection between Artificial Intelligence and Cyber Security.
The group focuses on two tightly linked challenges: how AI can be used to strengthen cyber defence, and how AI systems themselves can be made secure, trustworthy, and resilient against adversarial threats. Drawing on expertise from universities across the UK, alongside industry engagement, the SIG aims to build a coordinated national community around AI security. Its work spans AI-driven threat detection, adversarial robustness, protection of AI pipelines, and responsible governance of AI in high-risk domains such as defence, telecommunications, and critical infrastructure.
The SIG will address emerging risks related to misinformation and synthetic content, including fake news detection, AI-generated text and image identification, deepfake analysis, and synthetic data detection across multimodal systems. This includes research on uncertainty-aware detection, provenance verification, watermarking, and robustness against rapidly evolving generative models. The group further explores related cyber security topics such as LLM misuse, prompt injection, data poisoning, insider threat modelling, and AI-enabled social engineering attacks.
The SIG will also explore the intersection of AI and quantum security, including quantum-resistant cryptography, AI-assisted cryptanalysis, post-quantum secure system design, and the implications of quantum computing for AI model confidentiality, integrity, and secure deployment.
Hosted within CRANE, the SIG will act as a catalyst for collaboration, capability building, and future large-scale UK and international funding bids, while producing open and policy-relevant outputs.
Key aims
- Build a coordinated research community at the intersection of AI and cyber security from all across the UK.
- Advance research on AI-enabled cyber defence and the security of AI systems.
- Identify capability gaps and priority research challenges for the UK.
- Produce a UK Research Roadmap on AI and Cyber Security.
- Deliver open-access white papers, conference/journal papers and/or policy briefs for government and industry.
- Organise national workshops linking academia, industry, and policymakers.
- Support early-career researchers through leadership roles and networking.
- Lay foundations for future EPSRC, UKRI, Horizon Europe, and defence-focused proposals.
Main contacts
Dr Biju Issac
Associate Professor (Networks and Cyber Security),
Director of the Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research (ACE-CSR),
Northumbria University, England, UK
Dr Adam Robson
Senior Lecturer in Networking, Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics, University of Sunderland, England, UK
(Early Career Researcher)
Dr Meera Sarma
CEO, Cystel (AI, Cyber and Quantum),
Clavering Place, Newcastle Upon Tyne
England, UK
| Dr Harsha K. Kalutarage, Associate Professor of Cyber Security, Robert Gordon University |
| Prof John McAlaney, Professor, School of Psychology, Bournemouth University |
| Dr Yogachandran Rahulamathavan, Reader in Cyber Security and Privacy, Loughborough University London |
| Prof Luca Viganò, Professor and Head of the Cybersecurity Group, Department of Informatics, King’s College London |
| Dr Muntadher Sallal, Senior Lecturer in Cyber Security, Bournemouth University |
| Dr Fanqi Zeng, UKRI Early Career Fellow, Department of Sociology, University of Oxford |
| Dr Neetesh Saxena, Associate Professor, School of Computer Science and Informatics, Cardiff University |
| Dr Kavyan Zoughalian, Lecturer, School of Computing and Digital Technologies, Sheffield Hallam University |
| Dr Baidaa Al-Bander, Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence, Keele University |
| Prof Mohamed Khamis, Professor of Cybersecurity and Human-Computer Interaction, University of Glasgow |
| Dr George Raywood-Burke, Senior Scientist, Cyberpsychology Pillar Lead, Airbus |
| Dr Pejman Saeghe, Lecturer, Computer and Information Sciences, University of Strathclyde |
| Prof Wei Jie, Professor, School of Computing and Engineering, University of West London |
| Dr Abdel-Karim Al-Tamimi, Senior Lecturer of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Sheffield Hallam University |
| Dr Yulia Cherdantseva, Reader in Cyber Security and Information Systems, Cardiff University |
| Dr Charles Morisset, Associate Professor in Computer Science, Durham University |
| Dr Varun Ojha, Senior Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence, Newcastle University |
| Prof Nauman Aslam, Professor in Networks and Cyber Security, Northumbria University |
Upcoming events
AI-Cybersecurity CRANE Workshop 2026
Date: 1 May 2026
Location: Northumbria University, UK
A one-day hybrid workshop focused on cutting-edge research and practice at the intersection of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. The event will bring together researchers, industry practitioners etc. to share insights on AI-enabled cyber defence, adversarial threats to AI systems, secure AI development practices, and emerging priorities for UK research. The workshop will include a keynote talk, short paper presentations, and networking session designed to foster collaboration and seed new project ideas and partnerships.
NOTE: These workshops will be organised quarterly, along with an annual conference.
To join this group, please visit the CRANE membership page and complete the membership form. Existing CRANE member? Register here to join this SIG.