Real-World Solutions Meet Academic Excellence: Cybersecurity

UCL Centre for Data Intensive Science and Industry , in partnership with industry partners, offers each physics PhD student a unique 6-month placement opportunity within a company for a host of benefits. With around 40 successful projects, we have raised ￡500,000 of PhD funding through this scheme. Here is one such project:

Hunting for risk in source code with machine learning

NCC Group is a global expert in cybersecurity and risk mitigation. They work across various sectors, processing billions of security events every day and resolving 95% of cyber threats within two hours. Their mission is to make the world safer and more secure by offering comprehensive cybersecurity solutions.?

During a placement with NCC Group in the last half of 2022, our PhD student Nick Walters embarked on a mission to explore the applications of AI/ML in the cybersecurity domain. He developed a tool using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques and the pre-trained CodeBERT model to identify exposed secrets and crypto miners in source code. Additionally, Nik created an email ecosystem powered by OpenAI 's GPT-3, capable of generating and replying to emails automatically.?

"The calibre of students is always first class. Nik excelled in exploring the application of NLP to various cybersecurity challenges. His open-ended research led to feasible ML solutions that we can build upon. His contribution was invaluable."

- Matt Lewis , Commercial Research Director at NCC Group??

These projects not only showcased the potential of ML in enhancing cybersecurity but also demonstrated the practical skills and innovative thinking of our students. We are extremely proud of Nik’s contributions to this innovative project!?

More information and upcoming events

Check out our webpage for more information about the various types of industry-led projects. Reach out to Gabriel Facini and Sarah Malik for more information.

Upcoming events:

• November 9th: Data Science Career Fair
• November 14-15th: Leading in Collaborations Program