The AXA Research Fund, the science philanthropy initiative of global insurance leader, the AXA Group, has announced that Professor Robert Deng from SMU School of Information Systems (SIS) has been conferred the prestigious AXA Chair Professorship of Cybersecurity at the inaugural SMU Cybersecurity Forum held last week. This year, six AXA Chairs were selected for this honour globally and Prof Deng is the only one from Singapore.

Recognising that cybersecurity has become a key concern to businesses and individuals due to the increased frequency in cyberattacks and the resultant heavy price borne by victims of cybercrime, the AXA Research Fund awards Prof Deng EUR800,000 (US$858,000) over a period of eight years to support his research in the development of new ways of protecting data security and privacy. As AXA Chair Professor of Cybersecurity, Prof Deng will undertake a research programme to systematically investigate a unified framework for protecting data in the new environment. The research is expected to yield new security models, algorithms, protocols, and analysis techniques.