Paradigms on Technology Development for Security Practitioners

This open access book is authored by a rich mix of contributors from across the landscape of research, academia, LEAs, civil protection, and other first responders, practitioners, public and private organizations and industry to address some of the most contemporary challenges within global security domain. The authors cover topics such as protection of critical infrastructures (CI), serious and organized crime, counter (cyber) terrorism, border management, cybercrime, cybersecurity, management of disasters and crises, big data analytics, the application of AI and the legal and ethical dimensions of the implementation of cutting-edge technologies. The book benefits from research actions and lessons learned from more than 35 EU R&D projects within the security domain. The book not only addresses theoretical narratives pertinent to the subject but also identifies current challenges and emerging security threats, provides analysis of operational capability gaps, real world applied solutions, methodologies, and case studies within security domain.

This is an open access book.

Introduction.- Part 1: Cyber Crime, Cyber Terrorism and Cyber Security.- Cybercrime and terrorism.- Cyber Security.- AI and Cyber.- Part 2: Effective management and security of EU external borders.- Border Security Technologies.- Methodological approaches to border security.- Integrated platforms for border security management.- Part 3 Serious and Organized Crime (SOC).- Multimodal Data Fusion for combating SOC.- Big Data Processing and Analytics in context of SOC.- Data Visualisation and Decision Support.- Artificial Intelligence for combating SOC.- Part 4: Critical Infrastructures (CI) Resilience and Public Space Protection.- Cyber and System security for protection of CI.- Physical security of CI.- Case studies in protection of CI.- Protection of Public Spaces.- Part 5: Civil Protection and Disaster-Resilient Societies.- Crisis management.- Disaster management and Resilience strengthening technologies.- First responders technology.- Part 6: Strengthened Security Research and Innovation.- Part 7: Enhancing the defense capabilities of the EU.- Conclusion.

Babak Akhgar is Professor of Informatics, co-founder and Director of CENTRIC (Centre of excellence in terrorism, resilience, intelligence and organized crime research) at Sheffield Hallam University and Fellow of the British Computer Society. Prof Akhgar graduated from Sheffield Hallam University in Software Engineering. Afterwards he gained considerable commercial experience as a Strategy Analyst and Methodology Director for several companies. He consolidated this experience by obtaining a Masters degree (with distinction) in Information Systems in Management and a PhD in Strategic Information Systems from Sheffield Hallam University. He has more than 140 publications in international journals and conferences on SIS with specific focus on knowledge management (KM) within security domain. He has successfully supervised 12 PhD students. He is member of editorial boards of a number of international Journals, Chair and programme committee member of several international conferences. He has extensive and hands on experience in development, management and execution of Intelligence Management projects in large international security initiatives (e.g. Application of social media in crisis management, intelligence based combating of terrorism and organised crime, Gun crime, cyber security, Big Data and cross cultural ideology polarisation) with multi-million Euros budgets. In addition to this he is currently the technical lead of 3 EU Security projects; "Courage" on Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism and "Athena project" on Application of social media and mobile devices in crisis management and "Tensor" on identification of terrorist generated content. Prof Akhgar is founder of CENTRIC OSINT Hub, which provides law enforcement agencies with state of art capabilities to conduct wide range of open source based investigation from Organised Crime network to Counter Terrorism. CENTRIC OSINT HUB is used by wide range of LEAs in UK. He has co-edited a book on Intelligence management (Knowledge Driven frameworks for combating Terrorism and Organised crime). His recent books are titled Strategic Intelligence Management (National Security Imperatives and Information and Communications Technologies) Emerging Trends in ICT Security, Application of Big Data for National Security and Application of OSINT for investigation. Prof Akhgar was Trustee of Police National Legal Database (PNLD) for 2 years. In 2016 Prof Akhgar was chairman of Police Strategy forum. Prof Akhgar is member of academic advisory board of SAS UK, member of UN Safer cities technology task force, Board member of European Organisation for Security (EOS) and member of Europol external advisory board on data protection.

Dimitrios Kavallieros is a senior research associate and project manager at MultiMoDal Data Fusion and Analytics Group (M4D) of the Multimedia Knowledge and Social Media Analytics Laboratory (MKLab) which is part of the Informatics and Telematics Institute (ITI) of the Center of Research and Technology, Hellas (CERTH, Greece) focusing on cybersecurity research and innovation technologies. He holds an MSc in Ethical Hacking and Computer Security from the University of Abertay. He is currently PhD candidate at University of Peloponnese. He has edited 2 books and more than 30 articles in conference proceedings, journals and book chapters with specific focus in cybersecurity, cyberterrorism and digital forensics. He has participated in several European funded research projects assuming different roles such as coordinator, project manager, technical manager, scientific leader mainly focused on Cybersecurity, Cybercrime and Cyberterrorism, IoT & Cloud Security/Forensics, Digital Forensics and Blockchain technology topics.

Stefanos Vrochidis received the Diploma degree in Electrical Engineering from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, the MSc degree in Radio Frequency Communication Systems from University of Southampton and the PhD degree in Electronic Engineering from Queen Mary University of London. Currently, he is a Senior Researcher (Grade C) with the Information Technologies Institute of the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (ITI-CERTH) and the Head of the Multimodal Data Fusion and Analytics (M4D) Group. His research interests include multimedia understanding and retrieval, multimodal fusion, computer vision, multimodal analytics, artificial intelligence, as well as industrial, media & arts, environmental and security applications. Dr. Vrochidis has participated in more than 80 European and National projects and has been member of the organization team of several conferences and workshops. He has edited 3 books and authored more than 300 related scientific journal, conference and book chapter publications. He has served as a reviewer in several international Journals and as Technical program committee in well reputed conferences and workshops.

Ilias Gkotsis, Senior Project Manag