Dr Sadaf Hina
School of Science, Engineering & Environment
Current positions
Lecturer in Cyber Security
Biography
Dr. Sadaf is a Lecturer in Cybersecurity at the School of Science, Engineering and Environment (SSEE), University of Salford, Manchester, UK. She holds a PhD and an MSc in Information Technology from Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP), Malaysia, with research focused on Information Security. Dr. Sadaf brings extensive experience in teaching, research, and academic leadership across international institutions. She currently serves as the Programme Leader for the BSc in Computer Science with Cybersecurity at SSEE. In addition, she is the REF 2029 Co-Lead for People, Culture and Environment in Unit of Assessment 11 (UoA11) and previously held the role of REF Co-Lead for Contributions to Knowledge and Understanding. She is an active member of the IoT Research and Innovation Lab (IRIL) at the Al-Khwarizmi Institute of Computer Science and has contributed significantly to the research community as a co-chair and technical program committee (TPC) member for various international conferences. Her work is published in high-impact journals and well-regarded conferences indexed by SCOPUS and ISI. Dr. Sadaf has successfully secured prestigious national and international research funding and serves as an editor and reviewer for several high-quality academic journals.
Areas of Research
Artificial intelligence in cyber/ information Security, IoT/ IIoT vulnerability analysis and security, Zero-trust architecture for IIoT, Multilayer behaviour profiling in industrial control systems, Threat hunting and modelling in smart cyber-physical systems, AI-aided optimisation of IDS/ IPS, Security of artificial intelligence.
Areas of Supervision
Four PhD students solving problems around various cybersecurity domains integrating artificial intelligence.
i) Modelling autonomous agent for cyber offensive security operations
ii) Multistage detection of DDoS attacks in software-defined networking using a hybrid convolutional-deep neural network model
iii) Adaptable RL-based honeypot framework for detection of zero-day attacks
iv) AI-driven cybersecurity and privacy protection in smart home systems
Dr. Sadaf's teaching subjects are Information Security, Information Security Management, Network Penetration Testing, Security and Privacy in IoT, and Fundamentals of Cybersecurity. She is actively supervising BSc. final year and MSc projects/ dissertations on Information/ Cybersecurity domains. She is also supervising PhD candidates in the diverse domains of AI-aided Cybersecurity.
Qualifications
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PhD - Information Technology (Cybersecurity)
Recognitions
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REF Co-Lead - Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding (Outputs)
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REF Co-Lead - People, Culture and Environment
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Program Leader - BSc. Computer Science with Cybersecurity
Publications
- Adversarial attacks on artificial Intelligence of Things-based operational technologies in theme parks
- CyberEntRel: Joint Extraction of Cyber Entities and Relations using Deep Learning
- An intelligent context-aware threat detection and response model for smart cyber-physical systems
- Threat modeling in smart firefighting systems: aligning MITRE ATT&CK Matrix and NIST security controls
- Institutional governance and protection motivation: theoretical insights into shaping employees’ security compliance behavior in higher education institutions in the developing world