News
Joint Approaches: Tackling Security Challenges at the 1st Security Services Symposium
June 27, 2023. The 1st Security Services Symposium, held on June 13, 2023, at the Victory Services Club in central London, provided a platform for practitioners, academics, and industry experts to address current and future security challenges. CENTRIC’s representative, Martin Snowden, QPM, shared insights on collaborative efforts to shape the future of security. Organised by the Cranfield University ...
CENTRIC and Europol’s Innovation Lab introduce the AP4AI self-assessment tool
March 24, 2023. On March 23rd CENTRIC took part in the CERIS workshop on the use of Artificial Intelligence for Security Purposes. Hosted by the European Commission’s DG HOME in Brussels, this event brought together 90 members of the EU Security Community. During the first panel, which addressed how to consider the needs of law enforcement in both ...
CENTRIC attended the Security and Policing event in Farnborough
March 17, 2023. CENTRIC attended the Home Office’s Security and Policing event at the Farnborough International Exhibition and Conference Centre hosted by the Joint Security and Resilience Centre (JSaRC) from 14th to 16th March 2023. During the event, the CENTRIC team (represented by Babak Akhgar, Saskia Bayerl, Helen Gibson, and Andrea Redhead) presented CENTRIC’s current capabilities. Specifically, projects ...
Professor Babak Akhgar, Director of CENTRIC, awarded OBE for services to security research
June 21, 2022. Professor Akhgar received the OBE, the second highest order of the British Empire award, in recognition of his services to security research. A globally recognised leader in his field, Professor Akhgar’s pioneering research has made a considerable contribution to making the world a safer place through the development of innovative programmes to tackle organised crime, ...
CENTRIC showcase research to HRH Duke of Sussex
July 29, 2019. On Thursday 25th July, 2019 HRH Duke of Sussex visited Sheffield Hallam University to learn about the university’s commitment to applied research and addressing challenges in society. The CENTRIC team were thrilled to be given the opportunity to meet the Duke and showcase our significant collaboration with UN Migration and the World Health Organisation on ...
CENTRIC Cyber Winning National Awards
June 6, 2019. A team from CENTRIC met with members of the Protect Team at the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Cyber Crime Unit, to celebrate their successes at the recent National Cyber Awards and discuss continuing their award-winning collaboration. The ‘CYBER CENTRIC’ serious game that the two teams worked together to produce won two awards in April: Learning ...
Virtual Reality at the European Commissions Open Day
May 8, 2019. CENTRIC attended the EU Open Day at the European Commission’s Berlaymont building in Brussels on 4th May 2019. The event was open to members of the public to showcase examples of projects that had received EU funding. CENTRIC demonstrated the AUGGMED project as part of the DG Migration and Home Affairs stand. AUGGMED is a ...
MIICT Focus Groups: Interviews and Workshops in Spain, Cyprus and Italy
April 2, 2019. The MIICT Project started on the 2nd of April 2019 a series of focus group sessions and interviews at three pilot locations as part of participants and stakeholders requirements elicitation. Spain: from the 2nd till the 4th of April 2019 Cyprus: from the 10th till the 12th of April 2019 Italy: from the 15th till ...
Successful MIICT Project Kick off conference in Sheffield
December 13, 2018. The MIICT Project kicked off in Sheffield last month and the meeting was a huge success for everyone involved. The event involved many fascinating talks from migration experts, practitioners, developers and researchers from across Europe who all provided an excellent introduction to the project. The MIICT project kick off conference – November 2018 MIICT (ICT Enabled ...
Auggmed Validation Study
April 27, 2018. Over the weekend Auggmed 21st & 22nd April, Auggmed conducted a validation study at the West Yorkshire Police training facility in Carrgate. This very busy weekend involved training 80 trainee police officers, either through the Auggmed platform in Virtual reality or a live scenario using actors, or a combination of these two forms of training. The ...
Successful AUGGMED Final Pilot
March 27, 2018. The final pilot of Auggmed took place in the Port of Piraeus Port, Greece, on the 23rd of March. The aim of this pilot was to trial its Mixed Reality functionality. The platform has undergone many iterations throughout its lifespan, conducting pilots with end users along the way to obtain their feedback and improve the ...
Yorkshire Cyber Project – Book your place on our Cyber Resilience events now!
February 19, 2018. As part of the Yorkshire Cyber Project, we have arranged events across Yorkshire and Humberside that are aimed at helping you to understand some of the risks you and your business face from an insecure cyber infrastructure or lack or cyber security planning. At the events we will use scenarios that are based on real experiences of real businesses ...
Launch of new Yorkshire Cyber Project
January 25, 2018. We are excited to announce the launch of a new Yorkshire Cyber project. Yorkshire Cyber is a collaboration between CENTRIC and Stuart Hyde Associates to develop cyber resilience for SMEs across the Yorkshire and Humberside region. Yorkshire Cyber, recognises that cyber-security support is often aimed at larger companies with conferences and events held in city centres. ...
CENTRIC attend ‘Emerging and Current Challenges in Cyber Crime’ event at University of Suffolk
January 11, 2018. On Tuesday 9th January CENTRIC visited University Of Suffolk at the Ipswich Waterfront Innovation Centre to present a selection of our research and activities. The event, hosted by University of Suffolk, was a huge success and focussed on Emerging and Current Challenges in Cyber Crime. Attended by academics, Law Enforcement Agencies and businesses the event was an opportunity for all ...
CENTRIC Director Speaks at the CEPOL Research and Science Conference in Budapest
December 4, 2017. From the 28th – 30th November 2017 the CENTRIC Director, Profesor Babak Akhgar, spoke at the CEPOL Research and Science Conference – “Innovation in Law Enforcement” that took place in Budapest. The CENTRIC Director presented the EU funded UNITY project to the delegation and discussed advanced Community Policing training for LEAs and a baseline view of Community Policing. He ...
UNITY Consortium meeting in Leeds
November 30, 2017. This week the CENTRIC team have been in Leeds for the final consortium of the UNITY project. The meeting was very successful and during which the CENTRIC team discussed community policing and the serious game currently being developed around the community engagement concept.
Successful CENTRIC event at SRIEE 2017 in Tallinn
November 28, 2017. On November 14th and 15th the CENTRIC team attended the 2017 Security Research, Innovation and Education event (SRIEE 2017) in Tallin, Estonia. The Security Research Conference, organised by the European Commission, had two high-level panels focusing on “Conveying the future needs of Practitioners to the Research Community” and on “The future of security research. As ...
CENTRIC present 3 papers at the NGCP 2017 Conference in Crete
October 31, 2017. From the 25th – 27th October, the CENTRIC team were at the NGCP (Next Generation Community Policing) International Scientific Conference in Crete. The conference was a huge success and included the presentation of fifty-six scientific papers, of which CENTRIC presented 3, more details on these can be found below; Marzell, L., Brewster, B. (2017) A Framework for ...
CENTRIC produces GDPR Guide for the Police and Crime Commissioners’ Chief Executives across the UK
October 23, 2017. In recognition of the need to implement changes and engage in preparations to achieve compliance by May 2018 CENTRIC has produced a GDPR Guide for the Police and Crime Commissioners’ Chief Executives across the UK. This guide was presented by CENTRIC to the Association of Policing and Crime Chief Executives in October 2017. The GDPR ...
CENTRIC presents at UNESCO expert meeting in Paris
September 20, 2017. Tony Day (CENTRIC Technical Lead) presented the ‘Technical Aspects of the Dark Web’ on behalf of CENTRIC at an expert meeting in Paris on 14th September 2017. The meeting was organised by UNESCO’s Information for All Programme (IFAP), and gave an opportunity for representatives of UNESCO and external participants to discuss the challenges of cyber ...
UNITY Project meeting in Finland
June 29, 2017. CENTRIC’s director, Prof. Babak Akhgar, travelled to Finland during the first week of June to check on the progress of its community policing project – UNITY. The event served as a feedback and review meeting to discuss the outcomes of the projects recent pilot held in both Helsinki and Tampere, Finland. For more information on ...
Successful Launch of SCAAN collaboration project with IOM
June 12, 2017. Our exciting SCAAN project, the Security, Communication and Analysis Network, a collaboration between IOM and CENTRIC, continues to make excellent progress. This week a successful launch event took place at Sheffield Hallam University, for more details see the press release from IOM here or check out our new SCANN Video below for further information about the project.
AUGGMED showcase at the National Space Conference in Manchester
June 12, 2017. On the 30th of May, CENTRIC showcased AUGGMED at the National Space Conference in Manchester. During this three-day conference, CENTRIC welcomed a multitude of delegates from the space sector to try out the serious game platform. Working in collaboration with SERCO, delegates were shown how AUGGMED can be used to support multi-agency work, illustrating how intelligence ...
AUGGMED features in current edition of tech show BBC Click
May 20, 2017. On Friday the 28th of April, CENTRIC hosted the BBC Click show at Sheffield Hallam University and demonstrated the AUGGMED training platform. The demonstration included use of the simulator for security safety training and first responder triage training following an attack on a popular underground train station. The propagation of modern technology into every day ...
AUGGMED Showcase at the London Counter Terror Expo 2017
May 15, 2017. On the 3rd and 4th of May 2017, CENTRIC with the AUGGMED project ran a simulated training feature at the Counter Terror Expo in the Olympia Conference Centre, London. An international selection of attendees signed up to a collaborative training session with the AUGGMED team requiring them to make complex decisions within a potential terror ...
Successful AUGGMED Pilot takes place in Barcelona
March 28, 2017. AUGGMED is a Horizon 2020 funded research project involving multiple partners from throughout the European Union. The purpose of the project is to develop a serious games platform which enables online, multi-user training for first responders using numerous input modes including: desktop; touch screen; Virtual Reality (VR); and Mixed Reality (MR). The final goal of the ...
CENTRIC Exhibits at the Home Office Serious and Organised Crime National Conference
March 21, 2017. The Serious & Organised Crime National Conference (SOCNC) showcased some of the key practical initiatives that those on the frontline have been deploying since the Strategy’s launch. Through a combination of presentations and breakout sessions it equipped a wide range of practitioners to develop their own collaborative response, responding to the threat of serious ...
Invited Talk given by Professor Simon Andrews
March 12, 2017. An invited Talk was given by Professor Simon Andrews (CCRC, CENTRIC and Dept. of Computing) at Sheffield University iSchool, on 9th March, 2017. Title: Organised Crime and Social Media; detecting and corroborating weak signals of Human Trafficking online. Abstract: This talk described an approach for detecting the presence or emergence of Organised Crime (OC) via signals ...
CENTRIC and SAS collaborate to provide data analytics on Project Athena
March 9, 2017. SAS have released a number of articles detailing how SAS and CENTRIC collaborated during the Athena project to improve disaster response. SAS spoke with Professor Babak Akhgar, director of CENTRIC, and Professor Simon Andrews as well as Athena Project Manager Jessica Gibson (West Yorkshire for Innovation) . Charles Senabulya, Vice President for SAS UK & ...
Presentation at the Inaugural Yorkshire and Humber Cyber Protect Business Conference
March 1, 2017. Director of CENTRIC, Professor Babak Akhgar, presented at the Inaugural Yorkshire and Humber Cyber Protect Business Conference on the 28th February, 2017. Organised by the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Cyber Crime Unit, Professor Akhgar joined speakers from Law Enforcement and Industry in order to raise awareness around cybersecurity within the region. Professor Akhgar’s presentation was ...
How much Cybercrime is there?
December 5, 2016. CENTRIC presented the results of its analysis of the amount of cybercrime in Yorkshire and Humberside at AQL’s headquarters at Salem Chapel, Leeds on 30 November 2016. The presentation was part of Smart Cities: A Leeds Perspective jointly organised by the Women in Sustainable Construction & Property, the UK Business Council for Sustainable Development and ...
New ATHENA Project Newsletter
November 9, 2016. The October issue of the ATHENA project newsletter is now available – Newsletter – October 2016 The newsletter highlights the final prototype testing exercise that took place at the West Yorkshire Police Training and Development Centre in Wakefield, UK on the 27th September, 2016 taking you behind the scenes of the exercise. The ATHENA project ...
Professionalising Open Source Conference – October 2016
October 9, 2016. Professor Babak Akhgar (Director of CENTRIC) was invited to speak at the National Open Source Intelligence and Investigations Conference – ‘Professionalising Open Source Conference’ at Hinckley Island Hotel in Leicestershire from the 4th – 6th October. The conference provided an opportunity for delegates from a wide range of organisations to explore the issues, share their ...
Final UINFC2 Workshop – ATHENS
September 30, 2016. CENTRIC representatives attended the final platform demonstration & dissemination workshop of its UINFC2 on the 20th of September in Athens, Greece. The major objective of UINFC2 was to design and develop an interoperable software platform, to enable communication of information, seamlessly and securely, with existing reporting systems, aiming to: build and strengthen the capabilities ...
European Intelligence and Security Informatics Conference 2016
September 9, 2016. Professor Babak Akhgar (CENTRIC Director) was invited to provide a key note speech at the European Intelligence and Security Informatics Conference 2016 (EISIC 16) on August 17th – 19th 2016 in Uppsala, Sweden. The EISIC conference is the Premier European Conference on Counterterrorism and Criminology and Professor Akhgar’s Keynote was on the subject of Development of Situational ...
Privacy in the Digital Age of Encryption and Anonymity Online
June 14, 2016. CENTRIC was invited to, and spoke at, the EUROPOL conference, “Privacy in the Digital Age of Encryption and Anonymity Online” as part of a panel of experts. This conference enables members from academia, NGOs, the Data Protection Community, and other interested experts to debate importance issues on privacy, security, encryption, anonymisation and pseudonymisation. The objectives ...
Police Strategy Forum
June 14, 2016. The Police Strategy Forum is a conference which brings together the finest thought leaders from across the United Kingdom and provides the police with the opportunity to share ideas, benchmark best practices, and deliver better services to citizens. Professor Babak Akhgar of CENTRIC chaired the forum and further information on the agenda for the day ...
CENTRIC Presents at “Future Challenges in Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism Research: the CyberROAD perspective” in Cagliari
June 3, 2016. CENTRIC presented the results of its work on the COURAGE project, along with ongoing consolidated work with its sister projects CAMINO and CyberRoad at the “Future Challenges in Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism Research: the CyberROAD perspective” event, held at the Auditorium of the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, University of Cagliari – Piazza d’Armi, ...
The COURAGE – CyberROAD joint conference on “Emerging and Current Challenges in Cybercrime and CyberTerrorism”
March 14, 2016. The COURAGE, CAMINO, and CyberROAD consortia hosted the COURAGE-CAMINO-CyberROAD joint conference, which took place in The Hague, on Thursday 10th and Friday 11th of March, 2016. The event was part of an overall thinking and exchange process that aimed at promoting a European vision and road-map for the fight against cybercrime and cyberterrorism, a priority ...
CENTRIC Contemporary Policing and Security Challenges Booklet
December 17, 2015. CENTRIC’s new information booklet is available to download below and contains useful information about CENTRIC’s expertise, team members projects and capabilities. Alongside this it contains information from one of CENTRIC’s key collaborators, SAP. The booklet is available here: Centric Booklet 2015
Take Courage and tackle Cyber Crime
October 28, 2015. In a recent article, Gary Hibberd the managing director at Cyber Safeguard and Agenci talk about the Courage project. They will be discussing cybercrime and cyberterrorism and how the Courage project will aim to improve capabilities in tackling problems surrounding these concepts. Find out more at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/take-courage-tackle-cyber-crime-gary-hibberd
Joint Open Source Intelligence Conference
October 6, 2015. Athena, EmerGent and ePOOLICE jointly hosted the first Open Source Intelligence Conference. The conference took place on the 8th July, 2015, at the Italian National Fire Corps in Rome, Italy. Please click on the link below for the original news article, hosted on the Athena project’s website. The event was designed as a convergence of ...
Port Technology International Publishes Article on the AUGGMED Project
October 6, 2015. The Port technology Internation Journal published an article on the AUGGMED project, which CENTRIC is a part of. Please see a brief quote below and click on the link for the full article. “The platform will also offer tools to allow the trainers to set learning objectives for individual trainees and/or teams of trainees (from ...
AUGGMED: Research in using Immersive Virtual Reality to Train Police Forces
October 6, 2015. New article related to the AUGGMED project, published on Police Oracle. “AUGGMED project (AUtomated serious Game scenario Generator for MixED reality training), part of the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 program , will develop a multimodal virtual reality and mixed reality platform that can be used anywhere via a variety of devices and technologies from smartphones ...
Article on RSM Discovery: “Handling threats to the validity of online data”
October 6, 2015. New article by CENTRIC visiting researcher Petra Saskia Bayerl on RSM Discovery. “Long gone are the days of online naivety where web users openly disclosed details about themselves and paid scant attention to cookies, trackers and privacy policies. Increased internet security awareness has doubled the pressure on businesses and public bodies to re-interpret the personal ...
Preventing Terrorism and Violent Extremism by Andrew Staniforth
October 5, 2015. Andrew Staniforth, Detective Inspector and Senior Research Fellow at CENTRIC, is delighted to announce the 2014 publication of a new counter-terrorism book for police and partners. As part of the successful Blackstone’s Practical Policing series of Oxford University Press, the new title: Preventing Terrorism and Violent Extremism, illustrates key operational guidance on responding to terrorist ...
Taking Courage, Tackling Terrorism
October 5, 2015. In a recent article for Police Oracle, Professor Babak Akhgar, Director of CENTRIC, and Detective Inspector Andrew Staniforth, West Yorkshire Police, explain the groundbreaking cyber crime and cyber terrorism research for the European Commission of project COURAGE. To view the article follow the link: http://www.policeoracle.com/news/Terrorism+and+Allied+Matters/2014/Feb/10/Taking-courage,-tackling-terrorism_78286.html/specialist The online counter-terrorism series serves to raise awareness of key ...
Experience the Future of Policing with SAP & CENTRIC
October 5, 2015. In collaboration with CENTRIC, SAP will be hosting the Future of Policing event. Billed as the essential event for law enforcement professionals the event takes place on Wednesday July 9th 2014 at SAP innovative Experience SAP center. The event will feature speakers who are the key influential thinkers and opinion shapers from from the worlds ...
Tackling cyber crime and cyber terrorism through a methodological approach – UNICRI journal on Cyber Terrorism
October 5, 2015. Dr Andy Staniforth and Professor Babak Akhgar publish a new paper on using a methodological approach to tackling cyber crime and cyber terrorism in the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute journal on Cyber Terrorism. http://f3magazine.unicri.it/?p=621
Crime Fighting with Big Data Weapons
October 5, 2015. Professor Akhgar speaking with BBC Reporter Mark Ward about the importance of Big Data Analytics in the fight against cross-border crime. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26520013
Call For Papers
October 5, 2015. Papers are accepted for the Big Data, Intelligence Management and Analytics Workshop, as part of the 7th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing (UCC 2014). The workshop will take place in London between the 8th and 11th of December 2014. The website of the workshop is the following: http://bigdataworkshop.altervista.org/. Papers should be submitted ...
Massacre in Mumbai and the lessons learned
October 5, 2015. Andrew Staniforth, Detective Inspector and Senior Research Fellow at CENTRIC, continues his counter-terrorism series of articles for online police magazine www.PoliceOracle.com with an examination of the lessons learned for UK police and security forces following the armed terrorist assault in Mumbai five years ago. To view the article follow the link: http://www.policeoracle.com/news/Terrorism+and+Allied+Matters/2013/Nov/20/Massacre-in-Mumbai-and-the-lessons-learned_74410.html/features The online counter-terrorism ...
Social Media in Crisis Events Open Networks and Collaboration supporting Disaster Response and Recovery
October 5, 2015. Published at the 13th annual IEEE Conference on Technologies for Homeland Security (HST ’13) Authors: Babak Akhgar CENTRIC, Dave Fortune CENTRIC, Richard E. Hayes Evidence Based Reasearch, Bárbara Guerra EDGE Technology & Marco Manso RINICOM. Abstract — Large-scale crises challenge the ability of public safety and security organisations to respond efficient and effectively. Meanwhile, citizens’ ...
New Book Chapter
October 5, 2015. Andrew Staniforth, Detective Inspector and Senior Research Fellow at CENTRIC, has co-authored a chapter with Clive Walker, Professor of Criminal Justice Studies at the School of Law, University of Leeds and special adviser to the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, as part of a new ground breaking edited collection ‘Counter-Terrorism, Human Rights and the Rule ...
The Means of Contesting Terror
October 5, 2015. Andrew Staniforth, Detective Inspector and Senior Research Fellow at CENTRIC continues his counter-terrorism series of articles for online police magazine www.PoliceOracle.com with an examination of the the UK Government’s Counter Terrorism Strategy (CONTEST). Drawing on previous collaborations with Sir David Omand GCB, the former Director of GCHQ, author of CONTEST and Professor at King’s College ...
Data-driven crime fighting
October 5, 2015. How open-source intelligence can support and corroborate investigations By BABAK AKHGAR Criminals are connected by a maze of networks. Unfortunately, law enforcement is not always so well connected. Data sharing could change the face of public and national security. Read the full article at: http://www.sas.com/knowledge-exchange/risk/fraud-financial-crimes/data-driven-crime-fighting/index.html
Big data and public security: Analytics on the world stage
October 5, 2015. By BABAK AKHGAR Working together, agencies can harness the power of big data to understand the continuum of past, present and future – with a proactive focus on the future. Since the big data analytics foundation is available, there are no excuses. The mission of public health, safety and security, require us to take action. ...
Driving Preventive Policing
October 5, 2015. How IT can deliver the top police priority By JOANNE TAYLOR Today, law enforcement agencies around the world have the technological capability to deliver preventive policing – something that was previously inconceivable. To do that, IT must be seen as an ally, not a road block Read the full article at: http://www.sas.com/knowledge-exchange/risk/integrated-risk/driving-preventive-policing/index.html
Steve Lofthouse – SAP Visionary Award
October 5, 2015. Steve Lofthouse was recently awarded the SAP Visionary Award by SAP, ‘…in appreciation of his exceptional dedication, professionalism, innovation and engagement.’ Steve was also given the award/role of SAP Mentor by SAP, who describes their mentors as ‘..the most influential community participants in the SAP ecosystem. As part of a super smart and engaged global ...
Greg Saathoff – Ariel Castro testimony
October 5, 2015. Recent CNN coverage of his testimony regarding the Ariel Castro case:
Simona Francese – Fingerprints, a small world disclosing a world of information
October 5, 2015. TEDxSheffield – Simona Francese – Fingerprints, a small world disclosing a world of information.