Ross Anderson's mission was to develop the discipline of security engineering, which investigates how systems can be made robust in the face of malice, error and mischance. He made pioneering contributions to many subdisciplines, including peer-to-peer-networks, hardware tamper resistance and cryptographic protocols. Ross was a designer of the block cipher Serpent, and he worked on many applications with diverse protection requirements such as payment networks, power-line communications, goods vehicle tachographs and clinical information systems.
In addition, Ross helped to found the field of information security economics. Many complex systems fail not for technical reasons, but because of misaligned incentives. Consequently, game theory and microeconomic analysis are nowadays just as important to the security engineer as the mathematics of cryptology.
Ross was the author of the standard text Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems (2008) and regularly contribued to a blog on security research, Light Blue Touchpaper. He has also chairs the Foundation for Information Policy Research.
Professor Ross Anderson FREng FRS died on 28 March 2024.
Professional position
- Professor of Security Engineering, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge
- Founder and Chair, Foundation for Information Policy Research
- Professor of Security Engineering, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh
Subject groups
- Computer sciences
Computer science (excl engineering aspects)
- Engineering
Engineering, electronics, Communications incl information theory, Computer engineering (including software), Engineering, control (incl robotics)
- Health and human sciences
Economics
- Other
Public understanding of science, Publications
