Academia

Dr McDermott is Computer Scientist and researcher in Cybersecurity where he leads a Human-centred Security research team. He seeks to answer security related questions at the intersection between humans and digital technologies, in particular the Internet. Current Research interests include, but are not limited to:

Areas of Interest

Human Factors in Security:

  • Security by Design: System, Personas and Threat Modelling;
  • Secure Behaviour: Trust, Influence, Error and Crime;
  • Usable Security and Situational Awareness;
  • Exploits against humans: Phishing, Social Engineering, Insider Threats;
  • Misinformation (fake news, deep fakes) and trustworthy content on the Internet.

Machine Learning for Cybersecurity:

  • Threat Detection: IoT Botnet and DDoS;
  • Cyber Ontologies and Knowledge Graphs;
  • Large Language Models (LLMs) for cybersceurity

Outside of his academic research, he writes about Digital Wellbeing and Privacy, exploring tools and strategies that can help us lead healthy, safe and authentic digital lives. Specifically, how to manage our digital footprint and online persona.

Selected Published work

Editorial Activities