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Biography

John is Course Leader for the BSc (Hons) in Computer Forensics & Security at WIT and holds a PhD and BSc from UCD. In 2019 John was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship at Boston College. John’s research focuses on data mining for intrusion detection and network forensic analysis, along with small device investigations and ethics in cybersecurity. John is a member of the UCD Forensics and Security Research Group. He teaches modules in the areas of file system forensics, network forensics, oneline forensics and  device forensics. John has also lectured at BFH, at Champlain College (Dublin Campus), at NUIST in Nanjng and at Portobello College Dublin. John held the position of  head demonstrator for first and second year of the Bachelor of Engineering degree in UCD from 2000 to 2004. John has been involved in the organisation of many security and forensics events and has held the positions of workshop, TPC and keynote chairs for DFRWS-EU. John has been awarded national and european research funding and currently supervises 3 PhD students.

Courses that I currently teach

Introduction to Computer Forensics and Security

File System Forensics

Operating System Forensics

Network Forensics

Online Forensics

Device Forensics

 

Some past courses

 

Security (MSc)

Introduction to Computer Forensics (BSc Hons, year 1)

Introduction to Computer Security (BSc Hons, year 1)

File System Forensics I (BSc Hons, year 2)

File System Forensics II (BSc Hons, year 2)

Media Forensics (BSc Hons, year 4)

Network Security (BSc Hons, year 4)

Security Principles (BSc, Hons year 4)

Operating Systems (BSc Hons Year 1)

Computer Systems (Higher Diploma)

Security & Forensics (Higher Diploma)

Forensics (Springboard Diploma)

C, C++

 

Programme leadership

 

BSc (Hons) Computer Forensics & Security (2007-present)

 

Research/project student supervision

 

Currently supervising three PhD students

Taught MSc disserstations (several)

Final year degree projects (several)

Conference Organisation

Digital Forensics Research Workshop EU (DFRWS EU) 2023, Bonn, Organising Committee (Keynote Chair and Session Chair

Digital Forensics Research Workshop EU (DFRWS EU) 2022, Oxford University, Organising Committee (TPC Chair and Session Chair

International Conference on Digital Forensics and Cybercrime (ICDF2C) 2022 Technical Programme Committee

Digital Forensics Research Workshop EU (DFRWS EU) 2021, Online, Organising Committee (TPC Chair and session chair

International Conference on Digital Forensics and Cybercrime (ICDF2C) 2021 Technical Programme Committee

Digital Forensics Research Workshop EU (DFRWS EU) 2020, Online, Organising Committee (Workshop Chair and Session Chair)

Digital Forensics Research Workshop EU (DFRWS EU) 2020 Technical Programme Committee

International Conference on Digital Forensics and Cybercrime (ICDF2C) 2020 Technical Programme Committee

Digital Forensics Research Workshop EU (DFRWS EU) 2019 Organising Committee (Workshop Chair and Session Chair)

Digital Forensics Research Workshop EU (DFRWS EU) 2018 Organising Committee

International Conference on Digital Forensics and Cybercrime (ICDF2C) 2018 Technical Programme Committee

International Workshop on Cloud Security and Forensics (WCSF) 2018 Technical Programme Committee

Digital Forensics Research Workshop EU (DFRWS EU) 2016 Organising Committee

Digital Forensics Research Workshop EU (DFRWS EU) 2015 Organising Committee

International Conference on Digital Forensics and Cybercrime (ICDF2C) Technical Programme Committee 2012

Chair of two sessions at International Conference on Digital Forensics and Cybercrime (ICDF2C), Dublin, Ireland October 2012

International Conference on Digital Forensics and Cybercrime (ICDF2C) Technical Programme Committee 2012, Panel Discussion on the future of digital forensics education, ICDF2C 2012

Information Systems Security Association (ISSA) Ireland Security Conference 2012 Organising Committee

Joint organiser of many ISSA seminars and half day meetings

Organiser of Departmental Seminar Series 2006-2010 (Computing Seminars)

 

Peer Reviewing

Reviewer for Elsevier Computers and Security Journal

Reviewer for Elsevier FSI: Digital Investigation

Technical Programme Committee Member for DFRWS-EU

Technical Programme Committee Member for ICDF2C

Technical Programme Committee Member for International Workshop on Cloud Security and Forensics (WCSF) 2018

 

Publications

 

Rizvi, S., Scanlon, M., McGibney, J., and Sheppard, J., Deep Learning Based Network Intrusion Detection System for Resource-Constrained Environments, 13th EAI International Conference on Digital Forensics and Cybercrime (ICDF2C), Boston, MA, USA, November 2022.

 

Rizvi, S., Scanlon, M., McGibney, J., and Sheppard, J., Application of Artificial Intelligence to Network Forensics: Survey, Challenges and Future Directions, IEEE Access, Volume 10, ISSN 2169-3536, October 2022.

 

Hranický, R., Breitinger, F., Ryšavý, O., Sheppard, J., Schaedler, F., Morgenstern, H. & Malik, S., What do incident response practitioners need to know? A skillmap for the years ahead, Jul 2021, In: Forensic Science International: Digital Investigation. 37, 301184

 

Du, X., Hargreaves, C., Sheppard, J., and Scanlon, M., TraceGen: User Activity Emulation for Digital Forensic Test Image Generation, Forensic Science International: Digital Investigation, ISSN 2666-2825, January 2021 (BEST PAPER AWARD)

 

Sheppard J., A Partial Approach to Intrusion Detection, 11th EAI International Conference on Digital Forensics & Cyber Crime (EAI ICDF2C 2020), Virtual Event, October 15-16, 2020

 

Bromley, S., Sheppard, J., Scanlon, M., and Le-Khac, N-A. Retracing the Flow of the Stream: Investigating Kodi Streaming Services, 11th EAI International Conference on Digital Forensics & Cyber Crime (EAI ICDF2C 2020), Virtual Event, October 15-16, 2020

 

Du, X., Hargreaves, C., Sheppard, J., Anda, F., Sayakkara, A., Le-Khac, N-A., and and Scanlon, M., SoK: Exploring the State of the Art and the Future Potential of Artificial Intelligence in Digital Forensic Investigation, 13th International Workshop on Digital Forensics (WSDF), held at the 15th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES), Virtual Event, August 2020.

 

Sheppard, J., McGibney, J., Murphy, K., Scanlon, M., "Who threw the first punch?" Modelling Android Sensor Data, 22nd Triennial Meeting of the International Association of Forensic Sciences, Sydney, Australia, 17-21st May 2021.

 

Bromley, S., Sheppard, J., Scanlon, M., and Le-Khac, N-A., Retracing the Flow of the Stream: Investigating Kodi Streaming Services, Digital Poster, 22nd Triennial Meeting of the International Association of Forensic Sciences, Sydney, Australia, 17-21st May 2021.

 

Cloud Investigations of Illegal IPTV Networks, J Sheppard, 17th IEEE International Conference On Trust, Security And Privacy In Computing And Communications (TrustCom-18), New York, USA, August 2018

 

Investigating Kodi Addons (Poster), J Sheppard, 5th Annual Digital Forensics Research Workshop Europe (DFRWS EU 2018), Florence, Italy, March 2018

 

Cloud Evidence Extraction System (Poster), J Sheppard, K K McGlone, 2nd Annual Digital Forensics Research Workshop Europe (DFRWS EU 2018), Dublin, Ireland, March 2015

 

Teaching Forensics through Games – Spam Cluedo, Submitted to Forensics Workshop, University of Sunderland, UK November 2010

 

Growing Rose – An Online Tool Aimed at Reducing Occupational Stress in Employment, L. Widger, J. Sheppard, J. Cunningham, ICERI2010 Proceedings, p. 7254.

 

A Study on IT Adoption by Primary Health Care Practitioners in the South East of Ireland, John Sheppard, John Wells, Margaret Denny, Brenda Mullally, Sinead O’Neill, T McDonald, Micheal Bergin, WHO, Medetel Luxembourg, 2009

 

Primary Health Care and IT Adoption, Issues in South East Ireland, John Sheppard, John Wells, Margaret Denny, Brenda Mullally, Sinead O’Neill, T McDonald, Micheal Bergin, WHO Health Promoting Hospitals (HPH), Crete 2009

 

An Analysis of Feature Selection in TCPdump Data, John Sheppard, Joe Carthy and John Dunnion, In Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE Advances in Cybernetic Systems (AICS), Sheffield 2006

 

A Comparative Study of Data Mining Techniques Using A Reduced KDDCup Dataset, John Sheppard, Joe Carthy and John Dunnion, In Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE Advances in Cybernetic Systems (AICS), Sheffield 2006

 

The Use of Data Mining in the Implementation of a Network Intrusion Detection System. John Sheppard, Joe Carthy and John Dunnion, In Proceedings of the 2005 Web Information Systems and Technologies  (WEBIST 2005), Miami, May 2005

 

Textual CBR for Incident Report Retrieval. David C Wilson, Joe Carthy, Karl Abbey, John Sheppard, Ruichao Wang, John Dunnion and Anne Drummond, 2003 International Conference on Computational Science and its Applications (ICCSA 2003), Montréal, May 2003

 

The Use of Data Mining in the Design and Implementation of an Incident Report Retrieval System. Doireann Cassidy, Joe Carthy, Anne Drummond, John Dunnion and John Sheppard. In Proceedings of the 2003 Systems and Information Engineering Design Symposium (SIEDS '03), Matthew H. Jones, Barbara E. Tawney and K. Preston White, Jr., eds, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, pg 13-18. (Won “Best Paper" Award.)

 

A Data Mining Approach To Incident Report Retrieval. Doireann Cassidy, John Sheppard, Joe Carthy, Anne Drummond, John Dunnion. In Proceedings of the 14th Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science (AICS 2003), Dublin, September 2003, pp 23-27.

 

The Design and Implementation of an Incident Report Retrieval System, Cassidy, D., Carthy, J., Cullen, C., Hillary, P., McAdam, S., McGinty, L., and Sheppard, J., Ed. Vidal, T., and Liberatore, P., In Proceedings of the First STarting AI Researchers Symposium, (STAIRS-02) held in conjunction with ECAI-02, Vol.1, IOS Press, 165-167 . Lyon, France.

 

Funding 

 

Fulbright TechImpact Cybersecurity Scholar to Boston College 2019.

 

Principal Investigator Computer Vision Techniques for Law Enforcement in the Fight Against Human Trafficking and Child Abuse awarded under the WIT Presidents Prize PhD Funded Scholarship (2022-2026). Value: €86.000.

 

Principal Investigator Finding the wallet - Digital Forensic Investigation of Cryptocurrency Wallets and their Associated Blockchains (ICAB) awarded under the WIT South East Regional Development Fund 2021 Scholarship Programme (2021-2025). Value: €90.000.

 

Principal Investigator AI for Network Traffic Analysis in Digital Forensics and Incidence Response – Network Event Timeline Reconstructor (NETIRE) awarded under the WIT Presidents Prize PhD Funded Scholarship (2022-2026). Value: €86.000.

 

Member of Horizon Europe funded DDS-MAP: Dynamic Digital Skills for Agility and Resilience in Medical and Allied Professions (2023-2026).

 

Member of Horizon Europe funded DUCA: Data Usage Control for empowering digital sovereignty for All citizens (2023-2026).

 

Partner in ‘Alliance for developing, teaching and training Digital Forensics and Incident Response students and practitioners’, DFIR Alliance, Awarded under Erasmus Plus 2020, (Call 2020 Round 1 KA2 - Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices, KA203 - Strategic Partnerships for higher education, 1st of September 2020 - 28th February 2023. The grant has a total value of €273.280. Other partners include University of Liechtenstein (lead partner), Brno University of Technology and University Albstadt-Sigmaringe.


Principal Investigator for ‘Mobile Clinical Information Systems’ (MICS) January 2012 – July 2013, Awarded by Enterprise Ireland, Value EI contribution: e223,714 – total value: e359,270.

 

Web Aware, September 2010 – January 2011, (development of security/privacy content for second level students), Awarded by Campus Engage.

 

Reducing Occupational Stress in Employment (ROSE), November 2008- October 2010, Awarded by EC Leonardo Da Vinci Programme.

2019 Fulbright TechImpact Scholar at Georgetown University Washington D.C.

Management Committee Substitute Member for COST Action CA17124 - Digital forensics: evidence analysis via intelligent systems and practices

WIT School of Science Internationalisation Committee

Lecturer WIT 2006-Present

Course Leader BSc (Hons) Comptuer Forensics & Security 2007 - Present

Reviewer for Elsevier Computers and Security Journal

IEEE member

ISSA Academic Liaison Irish Chapter 2006-2012

Lecturer Portobello College Dublin 2004-2006

Head Demonstrator UCD Computer Science Departent 200-2004

Invited Talks:

1)   Computer Forensics in the West, University of Central Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan. May 2008

2)   Delivery of a module entitled “Introduction to Computer Forensics”, Nanjing University of Information, Science and Technology April/May 2009

 

Dissemination of Research and Scholarship: public lectures, articles in non-refereed publications, book reviews, broadcasts etc.

“FROM CYBERSECURITY AND CLIMATE ACTION, TO THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE HARP”, 14th June 2019, Fulbright News Stories, available at http://www.fulbright.ie/news-stories/

“Waterford scholar receives award from top US university”, 18 June 2019, Waterford Live, available at https://www.waterfordlive.ie/news/home/424638/waterford-scholar-receives-award- from-top-us-university.html

“WIT academic named first Fulbright-TechImpact Cybersecurity Scholar to go to Georgetown University”, 18th June 2019, TechCentral.ie available at https://www.techcentral.ie/wit-academic-named-first-fulbright-techimpact-cybersecurity-scholar-to-go-to-georgetown-university/

“Evidence indicates success for Cernam”, 23rd February 2014, Sunday Times, available at https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/evidence-indicates-success-for-cernam-h0dxxwvv9rz

“‘Web Aware’ helps students get internet savvy”, 26th January 2011, available at https://www.siliconrepublic.com/gear/web-aware-helps-students-get-internet-savvy