Centre for Cybercrime and Economic Crime
The Centre for Cybercrime and Economic Crime (CCEC) was founded in 2022 to bring together our extensive knowledge in these areas, and to enhance research, teaching and innovation in these fields.
Our aim is to harness, coordinate and develop the cybercrime and economic crime expertise across the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the wider University, including the School of Computing, the Department of Psychology, and the Faculty of Business and Law.
CCEC also enables greater multidisciplinary working and cooperation between the many other pockets of interest related to cybercrime and economic crime across the University and beyond.
As one the largest groups of active researchers in these areas in the UK, our members are at the forefront of researching and understanding the challenges posed by cybercrime and economic crime. Their work contributes to solutions that address these risks and enhance societal and organisational security and resilience.
CCEC incorporates and builds upon the work of the Centre for Counter Fraud Studies, and includes our Cybercrime Awareness Clinic.
Our members have also developed links with Korean academics to jointly study issues in cybercrime and economic crime.
CCEC research focuses upon these broad areas:
- Fraud
- Corruption
- Intellectual property crime
- Financial regulation
- Economic and industrial espionage
- Money laundering
- Cybercrime
- Cybersecurity
- Digital forensics
- Forensic accounting
- Prevention, detection, investigation and punishment for cybercrimes and economic crimes
- Environmental crime
- Victimology
Research groups
CCEC is built upon four smaller research groups focusing on specific areas of cybercrime and economic crime.
Cybercrime and Cybersecurity Group
We're researching how crime takes place using technology, such as cyber fraud, hacking, online abuse, and its impact on individuals and society.
Economic Crime Research Group
We're researching the scale, impact and cost of economic crimes — such as fraud, corruption and money laundering.
Victimology and Ecological Justice Group
We're researching victims and victimisation, inequality, domestic and online abuse, ecological justice, wildlife crime and climate change.
Cyber security
We're working to improve the security of the systems used to access assets, and to make the way people access them more secure.
Cybercrime Awareness Clinic
Part of CCEC, the clinic provides cybercrime awareness advice to individuals, community groups, schools, colleges and small and medium organisations, and conducts research into cybercrime awareness and prevention.
Anglo-Korean Security, Cybercrime and Economic Crime Academic Network (AKSCECAN)
Members of CECC have strong links with researchers in South Korea.
As part of an ESRC funded research project into fraud, cybercrime and ageing in the UK and South Korea, they have established an academic network.
Events
CCEC organises a range of events relating to various aspects of cybercrime and economic crime.
Every June, the Centre hosts a two-day international conference, in person and online, featuring dozens of presentations on a wide range of subjects. In January, we host an online Winter Symposium focusing on specific issues of economic crime. The Centre also hosts a series of seminars on relevant topics throughout the academic year, both online and in person.
Please sign up to our mailing list to receive notifications about all of our upcoming events and calls for papers.
Upcoming event
The 14th Counter Fraud, Cybercrime and Forensic Accounting Conference will take place at the University of Portsmouth, 18-19 June 2025. Registration will go live early in 2025, but in the meantime please see our call for papers.
Past events
Centre co-director Professor Mark Button delivered a public lecture at the University of Portsmouth on 16 October 2024, discussing the fraud epidemic, who is responsible and what can be done about it. To be informed about future public lectures and other events, please subscribe to our mailing list.
The 13th Counter Fraud, Cybercrime and Forensic Accounting Conference was held in-person at the University of Portsmouth over two days on Wednesday 12th and Thursday 13th June 2024.
This year’s conference featured keynote and plenary speakers including:
- Professor Rutger Leukfeldt (Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement and Center of Expertise Cybersecurity, Hague University of Applied Sciences)
- Oleksiy Feshchenko (former advisor to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime)
- Professor Durgesh Pandey (Professor of Practice, National Forensic Sciences University, India)
- Andrei Skorobogatov and Ayesha Babar (Home Office, International Fraud)
- Chris Freeman and Michael Betts (Public Sector Fraud Authority)
- Cyber Crime Unit, National Crime Agency
In addition to the above, over 30 speakers from across the globe shared their research and expertise on a range of topics including Online Harms, Victims of Fraud, Anti-Fraud Technology, Cybersecurity and Hacking, Digital Threats, Telecommunication Frauds, Beneficial Ownership, Fraud Investigation, Government Responses to Fraud, Fraud Detection, Organised and Environmental Crime, and Auditing.
The aim of the conference was to network, share our research and insights into techniques, ideas, or approaches that help to inform fellow scholars and professionals on important debates in the field of cybercrime, economic crime and forensic accounting.
The 5th Winter Economic Crime Symposium was held online on 18th January 2024, organised by Dr Branislav Hock, of the Economic Crime Research Group. The event featured sessions on Economic Crime in War and Exploring UK government initiatives to tackle economic crime, bringing together a diverse body of researchers, practitioners, students and other community members. The keynote speech, on Economic Crime and War Crimes, was delivered by Professor Noelle Quenivet, from the University of the West of England. The full programme including speaker biographies is available here.
The Symposium was supported by the Journal of Economic Criminology.
CCEC recently co-hosted the 2024 Annual Terrorism and Extremism Colloquium with the European Society of Criminology Working Group on Radicalization, Extremism, and Terrorism (WG-Extreme). The colloquium included panels on ideologies in online extremist dynamics, extreme misogyny, the methodological challenges of researching online extremism, pathways and recruitment into extremism, incels, conspiracy theories and emerging technologies, ethics and reflexivity and an early career researcher symposium. The keynote speech, on Navigating the Challenges of Researching Online Extremism, was delivered by Jokob Guhl, from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. The full programme including speaker biographies is available here.
The 12th Counter Fraud, Cybercrime and Forensic Accounting Conference, which took place on 14th and 15th June 2023, was hosted for the first time by the Centre for Cybercrime and Economic Crime and was a huge success, welcoming over 300 in-person and online delegates from across the globe, with over 50 speakers sharing their research and expertise. Over 60 organisations were represented, including higher education, banking and financial services, government agencies, law enforcement, crime prevention, technology, research, insurance and loss adjusting, accounting, law and auditing. Read more…
The Centre for Cybercrime and Economic Crime recently launched a series of online “fireside chats” – discussions between Centre co-directed Dr Vasileios Karagiannopoulos and industry leaders from the fields of cybersecurity, risk management and governance/compliance, sharing their insights regarding topical issues and associated challenges they are facing and that have a wider impact for the UK, its businesses and citizens.
For our first session we welcomed Onur Korucu (Managing Partner and Advisory Board Member of Govern ID, a WomenTech Global Ambassador and Council Member and International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) Ireland Chapter Chair) for a fascinating discussion about digital transformation of the EU and its impact on the UK. The event was recorded and you can watch the video here. If you would like to be kept informed of the date and time of our next fireside chat, please subscribe to our mailing list.
CCEC news
Report warns of missed opportunities by police in the fight against economic crime
Replace Serious Fraud Office in new focus on prevention
Study suggests quarter of UK adults commit at least one economic crime a year
New study highlights the alarming rise of telephone fraud targeting older adults in the UK
CCEC blogs and podcasts
Call for Papers - 2025 Counter Fraud, Cybercrime and Forensic Accounting Conference
Violence against women isn’t the only national emergency – we must also tackle the misogyny that’s causing it
Conference aims to tackle the global threats and challenges of cyber and economic crime
US sanctions on Iranian hackers highlight growing concern about the Islamic Republic’s cyberwarriors
12th Counter Fraud, Cybercrime and Forensic Accounting Conference
Research publications
See all CCEC research outputs on PURE
You can also view a list of books, articles and reports by CCEC members on their staff profiles.
Our members' most recent work related to cybercrime and economic crime is below.
Publication highlights
2024
Disseminating fraud awareness and prevention advice to older adults: perspectives on the most effective means of delivery
Button, M., Hawkins, C. D., Shepherd, D. W. J., Tapley, J.
23 Oct 2024, In: Crime Prevention and Community Safety, 16p.
Deep Image: A precious image based deep learning method for online malware detection in IoT environment
Ghahramani, M., Javidan, R., Shojafar, M., Taheri, R., Wan, S.
1 Oct 2024, In: Internet of Things (Netherlands). 27, 17p., 101300
Introducing the high-context communication style interview protocol to detect deception in pairs
Ashkenazi, T., Fisher, R., Leal, S., Palena, N., Vernham, Z., Vrij, A.
1 Sep 2024, In: Acta Psychologica. 249, 20p., 104440
The dishonest disposition and everyday economic criminality of the British public
Button, M., Hawkins, C. D., Shepherd, D. W. J.
1 Sep 2024, In: Journal of Economic Criminology. 5, 13p., 100090
Multi-scale convolutional auto encoder for anomaly detection in 6G environment
Alsubai, S., Innab, N., Nappi, M., Shiaeles, S., Umer, M.
1 Aug 2024, In: Computers and Industrial Engineering. 194, 13p., 110396
Featured publications
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Understanding the rise of fraud in England and Wales through field theory: blip or flip?
Button, M., Hock, B., Shepherd, D., & Gilmour, P. (2023). Journal of Economic Criminology, 1, 100012.
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The technification of domestic abuse: Methods, tools and criminal justice responses
Sugiura, L., Button, M., Nurse, J. R., Tapley, J., Saglam, R. B., Hawkins, C., ... & Blackbourn, D. (2024). The technification of domestic abuse: Methods, tools and criminal justice responses. Criminology & Criminal Justice, 17488958241266760.
Active Research Projects
Counter Fraud Cybercrime and Forensic Accounting Conference
Button, M., Gilmour, P., Karagiannopoulos, V., Sugiura, L.
01/06/2023 → 30/06/2025
The Journal of Economic Criminology
Our members are at the forefront of developing the sub-discipline of ‘economic criminology’, and have been involved in setting up the Journal of Economic Criminology.
Explore our courses in cybercrime and economic crime
The University of Portsmouth offers a wide range of courses related to cybercrime and economic crime, from undergraduate to Doctorate level. We also offer campus based and distance learning options for some courses. Many of our general criminology degrees also offer cybercrime and economic crime modules.
We can also provide bespoke courses and accreditation, please contact us for further information.
Postgraduate research degrees, Professional Doctorates and PhDs
Criminology postgraduate research degrees
Explore our pre-approved Criminology PhD projects, learn more about our MPhil and other research degrees, and find out how to join the thriving research community at the University of Portsmouth.
PhD
Discover why you should do your PhD at the University of Portsmouth – and explore the subject areas you can study in, how to fund your PhD, and how to apply.
Undergraduate courses
- Counter Terrorism, Intelligence and Cybercrime (Dual Degree) BSc (Hons)
- Criminology and Criminal Justice BSc (Hons)
- Criminology and Criminal Justice (Distance Learning) BSc (Hons)
- Criminology and Cybercrime BSc (Hons)
- Criminology with Environmental Justice BSc (Hons)
- Cyber Security and Forensic Computing BSc (Hons)
- Risk and Security Management (Distance Learning) BSc (Hons)
Short courses
- Certificate in Intellectual Property Crime and Illicit Trade (CIPCIT)
- Certificate in Prevention of Bribery and Corruption