Bill Buchanan (computer scientist)

William Johnston Buchanan OBE FRSE FBCS CEng PFHEA (born 6 March 1961) is a Scottish computer scientist. Buchanan is a professor in the School of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment. He currently leads the Blockpass ID Lab and the Centre for Cybersecurity, IoT and Cyberphysical at Edinburgh Napier University. In 2017, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to cyber security.

Buchanan is an enthusiast for cryptography and innovation.

Buchanan teaches Network Security and Applied Cryptography in the School of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment at Edinburgh Napier University, and his research focus is around digital identity, cryptography and blockchain. This applies into areas of health care and cybersecurity. He is the creator of ASecuritySite, and which hosts a wide range of cryptography applications, including within public key encryption, symmetric key encryption, digital signatures and key exchange methods. ASecuritySite.com was first released on 15 Feb 2013. In December 2023, he received the "Most Innovative Teacher of the Year" award at the Times Higher Education Awards 2023. In Dec 2023, he was appointed to the Bank of England CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) Academic Advisory Group (AAG).

Buchanan was awarded an OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List in June 2017. He was the first person in the UK to receive an award for services to Cybersecurity. In April 2024, Buchanan was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE).



Early life and career
Buchanan was born in Falkirk, Scotland, in 1961. He attended Victoria Park Primary School in Falkirk and then attended Graeme High School. On leaving school - from 1977 to 1981 - he was an Apprentice Electrician at the ICI Ltd in Grangemouth. He spent 1977 to 1978 at Falkirk Technical College studying Electrical and Electronic Engineering.

Between 1981 and 1986, Buchanan studied for a BEng (Hons) in Communication and Electronic Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Edinburgh Napier University. During this time, he undertook work placements with Racal-MESL and the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh. Then, in 1986, he became a lecturer and initially taught electronics, before moving onto computer engineering, data communications and networking.

From 1989 to 2003, he was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, and then as a Reader in the School of Computing from 2003 to 2006. Buchanan was promoted to a professor in 2006. He gained his PhD in 1996 with a thesis entitled, "Analysis of electromagnetic wave propogation using 3D finite-difference time-domain methods with parallel processing".

Cryptography
On 21 Dec 2015, Buchanan gave evidence for the Investigatory Powers Bill debate in the House of Commons: "I would say that we live in a very different world from the one that we did. We have built this cyberage within about 40 years, but the infrastructure that we have created is very fragile. We must protect citizens from hackers and so on. We must protect privacy and identity. More and more services are moving towards the provision of both privacy and identity. Individuals need to be assured that they are not being spied on by cybercriminals across the world. They also need to be able to prove their own identity and the identity of what they are connecting to."

Research and innovation
Buchanan's current research work focuses on areas of applied cryptography, blockchain, cybersecurity, citizen-focused health care and digital identity. He is included in the World's Top 2% Scientists list for 2022, and ranks in the Top 40 most cited research authors in Applied Cryptography.

In Unit of Assessment 11 (Computer Science and Infomatics) within REF 2021, Buchanan led two research impact case studies: "Enabling Sensitive Personal Data to be Shared with Trust using Novel Digital Security Methods", and "Protecting Employees, Children and Sensitive Data using Innovative Approaches to Cyber Security". Both of these impact case studies were graded as 4* (quality that is 'outstanding impacts in terms of their reach and significance' ).

On 6 May 2015 he launched The Cyber Academy at the Merchiston Campus of Edinburgh Napier University. He received the Principal's Award for contribution to Knowledge Exchange/Research in 2016 (Innovation of the Year and also Best Contribution to Information Society research theme) and in 2017 (Innovation of the year in Knowledge Exchange). Buchanan's research areas have recently focused on cryptography, cybersecurity and digital identity.

Buchanan's focus on patents has mainly focused on work related to spin-out companies, and thus for IP protection: has co-authored a number of patents. These include: An additional patent related to work with Dr David Lanc and Dr Lu Fan and related to work with Payfont. It is now assigned to Leading Software Ltd:
 * Buchanan, William Johnston; Graves, Jamie Robert & Bose, Niladri, "Improvements in or relating to digital forensics", published 2019-05-08, assigned to Fortinet Inc. Related to the Zonefox spin-out.
 * Buchanan, William Johnston; Graves, Jamie Robert & Bose, Niladri, "Digital forensics", issued 2014-11-11. Related to the Zonefox spin-out.
 * Stevenson, Ian; Bruce, Ramsay & Buchanan, William Johnston et al., "System and method for management of confidential data", published 2018-10-11, assigned to Edinburgh Napier University. Related to the Cyacomb spin-out.
 * Stevenson, Ian; Bruce, Ramsay & Buchanan, William Johnston et al., "Method for identification of digital content", published 2021-06-30, assigned to Cyan Forensics Ltd. Related to the Cyacomb spin-out.
 * Uthmani, Omair; Buchanan, William & Lawson, Alistair et al., "Information sharing", published 2015-05-26, assigned to The Court of Edinburgh Napier University. Related to the Symphonic spin-out.
 * Buchanan, William Johnston; Lo, Owen Chin Wai & Penrose, Philip et al., "Method for reducing false-positives for identification of digital content", issued 2018-10-11. Related to the Cyacomb spin-out.
 * Buchanan, Bill; Mclaren, Peter & Gordon, Russell et al., "Detection of ransomware", issued 2022-09-22 Related to the MemCrypt spin-out.
 * Lanc, David; Fan, Lu & Mackinnon, Lachlan et al., "Resilient secret sharing cloud-based architecture for data vault", published 2021-04-13, assigned to Leading Software Ltd.

Blockpass ID Lab
Buchanan leads the Blockpass ID Lab (BIL) and which was initially co-funded by Blockpass IDN and Edinburgh Napier University. It is located on the Merchiston Campus and was launched on 26 September 2018. Overall, it was the first research lab in the World to focus on digital identity, and hosts research work in areas on blockchain, digital identity, privacy-preserving methods and applied cryptography, with key focus areas of around citizen-focused data sharing. The lab has also hosted a number of related research grants, including GLASS and TRUSTEE, along with incubating the True Deploy future spin-out. BIL has generated a wide range of research outputs over the years, including for Threat Intelligence Sharing, Vaccination Certificates and Passports, Privacy-preserving passive DNS, and Combat fake content detection.

COVID-19 privacy-aware contact tracing
In April 2020, Chaloner Chute at the DHI defined a research brief for a team of experts from Edinburgh Napier University (Buchanan), the University of Glasgow (Professor Muhammad Imran and Professor Jill Pell ), the University of Edinburgh (Dr Claudia Pagliari ) and the University of Strathclyde (Dr Sanna Rimpiläinen ). This brief involved a review of the usage of contact tracing applications. Buchanan focused on answering the question, "How might the distributed system be architected to be secure and respectful of privacy from the outset?". Overall, each of the experts then reviewed key areas around the usage of contract tracing, and submitted a compiled report answering the key questions, and published as, "Use Of Participatory Apps In Contact Tracing: Options And Implications for Public Health, Privacy and Trust." This advised that the UK-proposed method of track and trace had weaknesses, and that Scotland should take an alternative approach.

Buchanan also applied his applied cryptography knowledge to areas of COVID-19 track and trace methods. This included collaborated work with the University of Glasgow on a blockchain-based method named BeepTrace. Buchanan also worked with teams on privacy-aware COVID-19 passports using the Ethereum platform, reviewed the state-of-the-art in privacy-aware applications for track and trace, implemented privacy aware identity matching.

Blockchain research
Within the Blockpass ID Lab, Buchanan has worked with Dr Nick Pitropakis in the supervision of a PhD students working on permissioned blockchains, such as those related to Hyperledger Fabric. These types of blockchains integrated well with Buchanan's focus on privacy-aware systems and which are citizen-focused. With Dr Pavlos Papadopoulos the focus was on privacy-aware systems in areas of DNS and health care:, such as for, " A privacy-preserving healthcare framework using hyperledger fabric", and "Privacy-preserving passive dns".

In the PhD supervision of Dr Will Abramson, the focus was on the self-soveign identity systems using Hyperledger and in data sharing, "PyDentity: A playground for education and experimentation with the Hyperledger verifiable information exchange platform". Buchanan advanced work with Hyperledger Fabric within the CyberHunt research project, and worked with Hisham Ali and Dr Jawad Ahmad on new ways of trusted threat sharing in cybersecurity with a "Trusted Threat Intelligence Sharing in Practice and Performance Benchmarking through the Hyperledger Fabric Platform" and "Privacy-preserving and Trusted Threat Intelligence Sharing using Distributed Ledgers".

In 2017, Buchanan worked with Dr Grzegorz Spyra and Dr Elias Ekonomou on the defining of sticky policies for OOXML (Office Open XML). This used an Identity-Based Encryption (IBE) primitive to securely bind an access policy and the document data together. Buchanan also worked on the digital investigations for blockchain-based transactions, including for bitcoin mixing and the investigation of ERC20 tokens. Within work on quantum robust blockchains, Buchanan worked with an international team on quantum robust blockchains, and which uses lattice-based cryptography with polynomials for IBE and aggregate signatures for a consensus. Buchanan worked with Mwarwan Abubakaron areas of blockchain based architectures for IoT and for vaccination certificates.

Quantum computing related
From 2017, Buchanan has worked in the area of post quantum cryptography (PQC) and published a paper entitled, "Will quantum computers be the end of public key encryption?" with Professor Alan Woodward from the University of Surrey. Recent work has included an analysis of the performance of the TLS protocol using Post Quantum Cryptography and in the application of quantum computing methods to Botnet Detection. New work involves applying quantum computing methods into cybersecurity applications, including using, "a hybrid machine learning methods on real quantum computers, with 100 data samples, and also with real-device-based simulations, with 5,000 data samples. It uses HQML (Hybrid Quantum Machine Learning) algorithms applied to the detection of botnet-generated domain names. This includes the features of the character length of the domain, the entropy of the domain name, and the reputation of the domain name."

Digital forensics
Buchanan work on digital forensics has includes the analysis of IoT forensics on devices, in the forensics artefacts left by the Tor browser and for the digital forensics within the IMO call and chat app.

Cryptography and encryption
Buchanan's research work in cryptography and encryption involves its integration into blockchain methods, post quantum cryptography, light-weight cryptography, end-to-end encryption and fundamentals areas around stream ciphers, chaos theory, random number generators and image-based encryption. Buchanan worked with Scott Helme on sampling the top 500 websites within Alexa Top 1 Million sites for industry sectors related to HTTP responses and in the usage of the Content-Security-Policy (CSP). Other related papers focus on improvements to cryptography within telecommunication components for end-to-end data encryption, enhancements to the RC4 stream cipher using a symmetric random function generator, and in the creation of a secure random number generator with immunity and propagation characteristics.

For privacy-aware COVID-19 tracing, Buchanan collaborated on work related to the usage of privacy-aware blockchain methods and applied cryptography. His work, too, has involved the creation of new methods to detect ransomware. This has included the discovery of encryption keys in memory, and in the usage of entropy detection methods.

Buchanan works with Dr Jawad Ahmad on a range of chaos-based work, and which supports a high degree of randomization from a small perturbance, including one of the first papers to outline the usage of chaos based methods applied to zero knowledge proofs. This paper outlines the concept of using port knocking to secure services, and where cryptographic hashes are through a chaotic process. Along with this, a key area of collaboration involves the encryption of digital images using chaos-based methods, such as with the Mersenne twister random number generator method with DNA genetic encoding, using chaos-based confusion and diffusion of image pixels using dynamic substitution, a multi-chaos based compressive sensing encryption technique, a multistage encryption scheme using linear feedback register and chaos-based quantum map, and using a convolutional autoencoder within chaos-based encryption.

In 2017, Buchanan worked with Dr Shancang Li and Dr Rameez Asif on a review of light-weight encryption methods for limited capability devices. Then, in 2019, he was joined by Dr Nilupulee Gunathilake and Asif to define key elements on the implementation, challenges and applications of light-weight cryptography for IoT devices and, in 2020, for recent advances related to IoT security. Buchanan's work has also included the breaking of light-weight cryptography methods through the capture for radio emissions from a device using the PRESENT encryption method.

MPhil and PhD supervision
Buchanan has supervised 37 PhD and MPhil students to successful completion. These include:
 * Dr Nikos Migas, "MARIAN: Mobile Agents for Routing in Ad-Hoc Networks", PhD, 2002–2005.
 * Dr Jamie Graves, "Forensic verification of operating system activity via novel data, acquisition and analysis techniques", PhD, 2005–2009.
 * Dr Zbigniew Kwecka, "Cryptographic privacy-preserving enhancement method for investigative data acquisition", PhD, 2006–2011.
 * Dr Nicole van Deursen, "HI-Risk: a socio-technical method to identify and monitor healthcare information security risks in the information society", PhD, 2009–2014.
 * Dr Solomon Uwagbole, "A pattern-driven corpus to predictive analytics in mitigating SQL injection attack", PhD, 2011–2018.
 * Dr Phil Penrose, "Forensic analysis of large capacity digital storage devices", PhD, 2013–2017.
 * Dr Elo Ukwandu, "RESCUE: Evaluation of a fragmented secret share system in distributed cloud architecture", 2014–2019.
 * Dr Grzegorz Spyra, "Embedded document security using sticky policies and identity based encryption", PhD, 2013–2019.
 * Dr Adrian Smales. "Test-bed and evaluation of a home-based adverse event prediction infrastructure", PhD, 2013–2021.
 * Dr Peter Mclaren, "Investigations into decrypting live secure traffic in virtual environments", PhD, 2016–2019.
 * Dr Will Abramson, "Identity and identification in an information society: Augmenting formal systems of identification with technological artefacts", PhD, 2018–2022.
 * Dr Pavlos Papadopoulos, "Privacy-preserving systems around security, trust and identity", PhD, 2019–2022.

Research projects
Buchanan has undertaken many research and innovation projects over the years, including recent ones of:
 * Distributed single sign-on-stack-on e-Governance Paradigm based on a distributed peer-to-peer (P2P) file exchange network for security, transparency, cost effectiveness and trust - GLASS. EU Horizon, Jan 2021-Dec 2023.
 * KTP Miracl, Innovate UK, Apr 2023-Oct 2025.
 * TruElect, Innovate UK, Dec 2022-Mar 2023.
 * TRUSTEE (Trust and Privacy Preserving Computing Platform for Crossborder Federation of Personal Data), EU Horizon, Jul 2022-Dec 2025.
 * AI-based privacy-preserving biometric authentication with mass-market smart devices, The Data Lab, Oct 2021-Sept 2024.
 * PhD Studentship, CyberHunt, The Research Funding Council of Norway, Feb 2021-Jan 2025.
 * PhD Studentship (Homomorphic Encryption), 6G Health Institute GmbH, Oct 2023-Sept 2026.
 * MemCrypt (HGSP), Scottish Enterprise, Sep 2020-Mar 2021.

DACAR (Data Capture and Auto Identification Reference)
Buchanan was the principal investigator (PI) for the Edinburgh Napier University work within the EPSRC/TSB (Technology Strategy Board)-funded DACAR project, and which focused on citizen rights to share data within health care. It ran from November 2009 until November 2011 and involved a collaboration between CipherLab, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, GS1 UK, Imperial College London, and Kodit. A core contribution of the project was the creation of the SPoC (Single Point of Contact) approach to information sharing, and the integration of identity, role and access rights to every part of the capture, storage and consumption of health care data. Its integration within Chelsea and Westminster Hospital was led by Professor Derek Bell.

The project was the first time that Buchanan formally worked with Professor Christoph Thummler, and who, at the time, had a post as a clinician at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and at Edinburgh Napier University. The core research team also involved Dr Owen Lo and Dr Lu Fan. The integration of GS1 UK allowed the integration of emerging RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) standards into the identification of medical artifacts, including tracking beds and medical equipment around the hospital.

After this project, Dr Owen Lo continued to work with Buchanan on a number of research projects, and was a co-inventor within the Cyan Forensics spin-out company and which changed its name to Cyacomb.

Scalable and Open Framework for Human/Digital Trust between Informal/Formal Personal Health Care Infrastructures
From March 2011 to July 2013, Buchanan continued to partner with Professor Christoph Thummler, Dr Owen Lo and Dr Lu Fan, and was the principal investigator (PI) on the ESPRC-funded, "Scalable and Open Framework for Human/Digital Trust between Informal/Formal Personal Health Care Infrastructures" project. This extended the work from the DACAR project but focused on assisted living, and involved a collaboration with Microsoft and HoIP (Health Over IP). While DACAR had focused on the sharing of health care information around hospital data, this project extented the core concepts to create a novel governance policy infrastructure using a circle-of-trust relationship for assisted living. This linked to formal, role-based security for primary and secondary health care. New work also included the integration of the SPoC approach with the Microsoft Health Vault.

At the time, the work was known as Cloud4Health, and Buchanan gave an overview of the approach in a submission for a Scotland IS award in May 2012. Overall, the work in this project and DACAR laid the technical foundation for the Symphonic spin-out company from Edinburgh Napier University in 2013. It also the main focus for the 4* rated - quality that is world-leading in terms of originality, significance and rigour - impact case study for UoA 11 in REF 2021 entitled, "Enabling Sensitive Personal Data to be Shared with Trust using Novel Digital Security Methods".

GLASS research project
Buchanan is the principal investigator (PI) for the Edinburgh Napier University work within the EU Horizon funded GLASS project, and which is a new paradigm for sharing or transfer of personal information with the citizen in control. It started in January 2021 and completed in December 2023 (Grant agreement No 959879). The research project includes collaborators from TAGES (Teknoloji Arastirma ve Gelistirme Endustriyel Urunler Bilisim Teknolojileri San. ve Tic. A.S.), Fraunhofer FOKUS, UBITECH Limited, University of Patras, Suite 5, Hellenic Ministry of Digital Governance, and Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. This has built a citizen focused digital wallet and new models data sharing using Hyperledger Fabric and IPFS (InterPlanetary File System). In 2022, the GLASS project received "Leading Light Innovation" award at the Scottish Cybersecurity Awards.

vSoC (Virtual SOC)
Buchanan has innovated the vSoC teaching and training environment within Edinburgh Napier University, and which is used by students within the cybersecurity and networking-related subjects. The work started within a grant funded by DG Home related to the "Prevention Of and Fight against Crime" theme and was entitled, "DFET (Digital Forensics Evaluation and Training)". It was led by Buchanan, and included collaborators of Stefan Institute (JSI), Stockholm University, Police Scotland, and Aconite Internet Solutions. This provided the basic cloud infrastructure for the environment and used a VMWare vSphere virtualised environment that was hosted within the Merchiston Campus at Edinburgh Napier University. From December 2015 to February 2017, the Advanced HE advanced the work by funding a project entitled, "vSOC - Virtualised Security Operations Centre", and which scaled vSoC into cybersecurity areas. The work continued with the funding of a KTP (Knowledge Transfer Partnership) from Innovate UK and Satisnet Limited and which integrated SIEM tools into the environment. From June 2019 to May 2020, The Data Lab funded integrated of data science and cybersecurity. The vSoC 2 project undated the original vSoC environment, and was shortlisted for the Supporting Excellence in Learning, Teaching and Research at the 2024 UCISA Awards.

Side channel analysis - noise and RF emission
Buchanan's work with Dr Owen Lo and Dr Nilupulee Gunathilake has included an analysis of side channel attacks on the cryptography running on embedded devices using electrical noise generation and radio emissions. From Jan 2017 to Jan 2017, Buchanan and Owen Lo worked with Keysight on research related to "Bare Metal Forensics - Pattern Analysis Heuristics - Data Analysis", and co-funded by The Data Lab. This resulted in a paper entitled, "Power analysis attacks on the AES-128 S-box using differential power analysis (DPA) and correlation power analysis (CPA)" and which cracked 128-bit AES encryption on an Arduino Uno from the electrical noise generated from the device. Douglas Carson from Keysight and Lo presented the work live on 21 September 2016 at an event in Edinburgh.

From Nov 2016 to Oct 2017, work continued with the support of CENSIS, and which analysed IoT Bluetooth threats related to health care devices in a research project entitled "IoT Hardware Security Test Framework". For this, in Sept 2018, Buchanan defined, "The biggest thing holding back the development of the IoT is security – specifically, concerns about the vulnerabilities of devices, the ease of hacking them, and the consequences of such hacks. In health care, for example, IoT could transform the way we monitor health and manage conditions like asthma. Only if we can improve confidence in IoT security can we realise the potential of smart technology."

Lo, Buchanan and Carson also managed to break the PRESENT block cipher on an embedded device using CPA (Correlation Power Analysis) and electrical noise generation. Gunathilake has since advanced the work in the analysis of radio emission from devices, including the cracking of the PRESENT light-weight encryption method.

Ransomware research projects
Dr Gordon Russell, Dr Thomas Tan and Buchanan were part of Peter McLaren's PhD supervision, and which resulted in a thesis entitled, "Investigations into decrypting live secure traffic in virtual environments". Buchanan then was the principal investigator (PI) for the "MemCrypt" research project and which was funded from Sept 2020 to March 2021 by Scottish Enterprise within its High Growth Spin-out Programme. Dr Owen Lo and McLaren then developed the work on the detection of encryption keys in memory, and scaled it to work with the detection of a range of ransomware families. From April 2020 to July 2020, Buchanan led an Innovate UK CyberASAP grant, and which continued to a second phase from Sept 2020 to Feb 2021. This resulted in a spin-out company in January 2021 with Peter Jaco as CEO, and Peter Mclaren at CTO.

Significant research outputs from research work includes the mining malware command and control traces, the finding ChaCha20 key streams from targeted memory analysis, a patent in the detection of ransomware", the evaluation of live forensic techniques in ransomware attack mitigation. Recent work includes the usage of entropy techniques to detect the presence of ransomware keys and files, including with a differential area analysis fmethod, and in the evaluation of a range of entropy detection methods to discover encrypted content.

Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with Cànan Ltd
Over 2003/2004, Buchanan worked with Cànan Ltd - who are based at Sabhal Mor Ostaig in Sleat on the Isle of Skye - on a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project to advance Gaelic language learning. This support aimed to scale-up of Cànan's print-based content into a multimedia delivery. The KTP Associate was Evan Brown, and his academic supervisor was Buchanan.

The KTP gained a Grade 1 Certificate of Excellence from Innovate UK, and won the KTP Award Winning Partnership of the year in 2004. At the time, Donella Beaton, Ceannard/Chief Executive, Cànan Ltd, outlined, "The KTP programme brought knowledge, partnerships, confidence, publicity, quality staff and a can-do attitude. The grant allowed these aspects to develop, but the results were much greater than a pure financial investment. I would thoroughly endorse the Knowledge Transfer Programme to any organisation who knows what they would like to achieve, but doesn't know how to go about it."

The KTP resulted in BubbleSpeak, an innovative templatebased content system that is simple to use, portable and platform independent. Cànan gained a culture of innovation and access to new technologies, which raised its profile, generated a new lucrative market and embedded a practice of research and development. Buchanan, defined that, "Big companies can afford to have research and development departments but small and medium operations do not have the resources. The companies need the Associates because they do not have the skills inhouse or the access to equipment which we can provide." The success of the KTP allowed Buchanan to develop his own research group named "Distributed Systems and Mobile Agents" (DSMA) within the School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University.

Health care-related research
Along with cybersecurity and cryptography, Buchanan has a driving passion for improving health care through research methods, and with a special focus on citizen-focused care. This can be traced back to work from March 2011 to July 2013, and where he led work at Edinburgh Napier University in a partnership with Edinburgh Napier University, Microsoft and HoIP. This project was funded by EPSRC and entitled, "Scalable and Open Framework for Human/Digital Trust between Informal/Formal Personal Health Care Infrastructures". It involved the creation of a novel governance policy infrastructure using a circle-of-trust relationship for assisted living, and with links to formal, role-based security for primary and secondary health care.

Buchanan then teamed up with his PhD student (Adrian Smales), and kick-started the "e-FRAIL - Early detection of FRAilty and Illness" research project and which ran from October 2015 to December 2016 and funded by the Digital Health Institute (DHI). The partnership continued to advance from August 2017 to Feb 2018 with "e-Frail - Phase 2" which added key risk assessments using a Delphi method for understanding of frailty. This led to a collaboration with CM2000 on the development of the Advanced Risk Modelling for Early Detection (ARMED) product and which won the 'Innovation of the Year' award at Scottish Knowledge Exchange Awards in 2020.

Alongside the work on frailty, Buchanan led a number of research which integrated digital trust and blockchain into next generation health care systems. This involved leading a research project for the tracking of medical devices within a health care environment though public blockchain methods. The work involved a collaboration with Spiritus within the "Health Blockchain" project and was funded by The Data Lab (August 2017-March 2019). Work continued with the development of a trusted health care infrastructure with "Next Generation Trust Architecture" from March 2018 to February 2020, and "Next Generation Connectivity with Health and Well-being" from October 2018 to July 2021. Both were frunded and funded by the DHI. New research work involves the investigation of 6G and homomorphic encryption methods with privacy-aware health care records.

With his work, he has analysed the scalability of e-Health, in "E-health: Chances and challenges of distributed, service oriented architectures", and within the implementation of a risk model within health care environments. A particular focus has been on the use of blockchain applications, and within vaccination certificates.

After completing his PhD in 2021, Adrian Smales left the research team to join Smplicare as the Chief Innovation Officer.

Policing-related research and engagement
Over the last few years, Buchanan has worked on law enforcement and policing related work, and with a particular focus on information sharing, digital forensics and network security. From Sep 2008 to Oct 2011, Buchanan supervised a SIPR-funded PhD project entitled, "Information Sharing between the Police and their Community Partners". This work investigated improved methods of information sharing between law enforcement agencies, and outlined the principal of the SPoC (Single Point of Contact) for information sharing between the police and their community partners. This work aimed to overcome the barriers that led to a lack of information sharing around Investigations related to the Victoria Climbié murder in 2000. The work was sustained as the Symphonic spin-out and resulting in a related patent entitled, "Information Sharing".

Buchanan has also run training courses for Policy Scotland over a few years, and which focused on EnCase digital forensics and network security. Over 2022–2023, he chaired the Evidence and Scientific Standards working group as part of the "Independent advisory group on new and emerging technologies in policing.", and one of the conclusions was that, "Police practices should be based on scientific evidence about what works best and hence it is important that for any evidence-based pilot developing, industry must engage academia. Academia are keen to support the development, testing and promotion of innovative practice to help build the evidence-based solution and understand what would work best."

Academic spin-outs
Buchanan has led research which has led to three successful spin-out companies: Zonefox, Symphonic and Cyan Forensics. In October 2018, Zonefox was acquired by Fortinet, and in November 2020, Symphonic were acquired by Ping Identity. To highlight this success, in Sept 2023, Edinburgh Napier University was rated in the Top 10 in the UK for spin-outs related to work conducted by Octopus Ventures.

Zonefox
The work of Dr Jamie Graves and Buchanan on a PhD project ("Forensic verification of operating system activity via novel data, acquisition and analysis techniques" ) led to the incorporation of Inquisitive Systems Limited in 2008. This led to the submission of patents entitled "Improvements in or relating to digital forensics" and "Digital Forensics" in Oct 2008, and Sept 2009, respectively. The "Improvements in or relating to digital forensics" was published for world-wide status in March 2010, and granted in the EU in May 2019. The "Digital Forensics" patent was granted in Nov 2014 for the US.

The patents captured the core research: defining activity footprints as a 'digital DNA' sequence, which can be used with a new matching algorithm (BLAST DNA) to determine the probability of a sequence match to a malicious event, significantly outperforming existing signature-based methods. This proved particularly useful in detecting insider threats such as copying source-code to a USB device. The original patent owner was Edinburgh Napier University, and where the existing EU patent is owned by Fortinet Inc.

After funding from Scottish Enterprise in the Proof of Concept programme from September 2008 to August 2010, the research work was spun-out from Edinburgh Napier University in September 2010, and where Graves was the CEO, and who continued in this post until Zonefox was acquired by Fortinet Inc. The company, in 2013, changed its trading name to Zonefox. On 23 October 2018, Fortinet Inc announced that it had fully acquired Zonefox and that Zonefox's product range would be integrated into the Fortinet Security Fabric offering. Edinburgh Napier University was one of the significant shareholders in the acquisition, along with the co-inventors.

Graves returned to Edinburgh Napier University in Feb 2021 to take up a post "Entrepreneur in Residence" with a Royal Society-funded grant.

Symphonic
For over a decade, Buchanan has run research work related to sharing and integrating the rights of the citizen. It addresses gaps around data governance related to ownership rights, governance, and privacy through the creation of a framework that set out new processes relating to citizen-defined access policies.

The research began in 2008 with a collaboration with Police Scotland, looking at weaknesses around information sharing within law enforcement, and in developed new ways to integrate large-scale integration of rights across interconnected domains. It resulted in the submission of a patent for the US in January 2013, for the World in Jun 2014. The US patent was granted in July 2014.

Other related research led by Buchanan was funded within two EPSRC/Innovate UK funded projects: "Data Capture and Auto Identification Reference" (DACAR) and "Scalable and Open Framework for Human/Digital Trust between Informal/Formal Personal Health Care Infrastructures". This work was then further developed by introducing the concept of data-buckets owned by the citizen, and in the concept of using a SPoC (Single Point of Contact) for sharing information between interconnected domains.

From March 2012 to October 2013, the work was in a project entitled, "sa.FIRE" (Secure Analysis and FIltering Risk Engine) and funded from Scottish Enterprise on their HGSP programme, and where Derick James, Richard Lewis (as a Commercial Champion) and Niall Burns came on board. The company spun out of Edinburgh Napier University in 2014, and received initial investment from Par Equity. Derick James became the CEO and Niall Burns was the CTO. The company eventually dropped the "Trust" part of its name and just traded as Symphonic.

Cyacomb
From 2014 to 2017, Buchanan and Rich Macfarlane supervised Dr Phil Penrose for a PhD. The work was submitted in 2017, and called "Forensic analysis of large capacity digital storage devices". This led to a UK patent application entitled, "Method for identification of digital content" in April 2017. The UK patent was granted in the UK in June 2021, and published as a World patent in October 2018, an EU patent in February 2020, a Canadian patent in October 2018, and a US patent in September 2021.

From March 2015 to January 2016, the work was funded by Scottish Enterprise as part of a Proof of Concept grant. In June 2016, Cyan Forensics was first incorporated, and became a spin-out from Edinburgh Napier University. The CEO was Ian Stevenson and the CTO was Bruce Ramsay. The co-inventors of the core technology for the spin-out were Buchanan, Dr Phil Penrose, Rich Macfarlane, Bruce Ramsay and Dr Owen Lo.

In March 2022, Cyan Forensics changed their trading name to Cyacomb. In 2022, Cyacomb were awarded with a Technology Pioneer by World Economic Forum, and an innovation award winner at the GovTech Summit in 2019. The company also received a Cybersecurity award in the same year for "Best Cyber Breakthrough" in 2019 at the Scottish Cyber Awards.

Par Equity led a £5 million Series A funding round in March 2021. In October 2023, Cyacomb received Digital received investment of £3.8million from the Scottish National Investment Bank (SNIB), Par Equity, Mercia Ventures, Scottish Enterprise and private investors, with Jane Reoch, executive director at SNIB outining that, "Cyacomb is at the forefront of tech development in Scotland. They perfectly align with our mission to harness innovation."

MemCrypt
Buchanan supported the creation of the MemCrypt spin-out, and which focuses on the discovery of cryptographic keys in memory (based on the PhD work of Dr Peter McLaren ). The team then progressed this work by including triage methods into the discovery of encryption keys within memory. Key contributions include being the first to detect the presence of ChaCha20 encryption keys in running memory (one of the most popular encryption methods used in secure communications), and identifying a major vulnerability within tools such as OpenSSL.

The work has since been applied to ransomware detection and recovery. From September 2020 until March 2021, the work received funding from Scottish Enterprise as part of their HGSP grant awards, and, from September 2020 until Feb 2021 from the Innovate UK Cyber ASAP programme. MemCrypt Limited spun out of Edinburgh Napier University in Oct 2020 and incorporated in Jun 2021. In November 2021, the research work related to MemCrypt received a Leading Light Innovation award at the Scottish Cybersecurity awards.

Learning and teaching
In 2018, Buchanan became a principal fellow of the Higher Education Academy (PFHEA). He is the creator and sole author of the Asecuritysite.com web site, and which focuses on covering cryptography and various areas of networking and cybersecurity, from both a theoretical and practical approach. Buchanan was also the software creator of the Bright Red Publishing Digital Zone, and which contains Web-based content for many of the subjects included in the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) N5, Higher and Advanced Higher syllabus' in Scotland. Asecuritysite was a shortlisted finalist at for the Security Training Programme of the Year at the Computing Security Excellence Awards 2024.

He has also created a number of novel learning environments, including vSoC (Virtualised Security Operation Center) and which is a cloud-based infrastructure for cybersecurity learning. Along with this, Buchanan has developed an online Cipher Capture The Flag set of challenges, and Web-based Cisco device simulators (previously known as Networksims ProfSIMs).

Viewpoints on education and knowledge exchange
Buchanan writes on areas of cryptography, cybersecurity and computer science within the blog entitled "ASecuritySite: When Bob Met Alice" and has a YouTube channel containing a range of lectures, tutorials and demonstrations, along with related Apple, Spotify and Audible podcasts.

Teaching awards
Buchanan has received a number of teaching-related awards, including, in 2014, winning the ENSA Student-voted Excellence Awards award for "Most Innovative Tutor." He also won the Best Lecturer/Tutor for Computing in the ENSA Student-voted Excellence Awards in the School of Computing for 2011, 2014, 2015, 2019, 2020 and 2023. He and Rich Macfarlane supervised Charley Celicé and who won the Student of the Year award at Edinburgh Napier University in 2015.

In 2016, Buchanan was awarded with the "Cyber Evangelist of the Year" at the first Scottish Cybersecurity awards. At these awards, his previous PhD student - Dr Jamie Graves - received a "Champion of Champions" award for his work in advancing Zonefox.

In December 2023, Buchanan received the "Most Innovative Teacher of the Year" award at the Times Higher Education Awards 2023.

Postgraduate and undergraduate programmes
Buchanan set up the MSc in Advanced Security and Digital Forensics in the School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University in 2010. It was the first MSc course in the UK to receive full NCSC certification. A core part of the support for distance students has been built around the vSoC teaching infrastructure. Buchanan also created the BEng (Hons) in Cybersecurity and Forensics in the School of Computing, and which was awarded full NCSC accreditation in 2018.

In August 2023, the School of Computing was awarded a Gold award status for its ACE-CSE (Academic Centre of Excellence - Cyber Security Education). Buchanan and Rich Macfarlane are co-directors of the ACE-CSE, where Buchanan is responsible for areas of innovation, research and enterprise.

Bright Red Publishing Digital Zone
Bright Red Publishing is an Edinburgh-based book publisher that focus on textbooks for schools related to N5, Higher and Advanced Higher topics. The first phase of the first between a collaboration between Bright Red Publishing and Buchanan ran from July 2012 to Dec 2012, and was funded by Interface Online. This created the Digital Zone and which was an innovative method of converting electronic version of the books into an online format, while provided a novel range of Mathematics and Physics abstactions, such as for formula translation and solution checkers. It was coded in C# and uses a Microsoft ASP.NET infrastructure. The second phase of the collaboration focused on "Innovation and Integrated Learning Environment for Engaging and Ever-changing Educational Content". It involved using Buchanan developing a dynamic challenges in the generation for test questions. This allowed for template questions, and which could be used to generate ever-changing questions. Buchanan and Bright Red Publishing have continued to collaborate, and with 26 N5 books, 20 Higher books, and eight Advanced Higher Books.

Cyber&Data programme
In 2019 Buchanan set up the Data Lab to bring together academic content and practical challenges linking data science with cybersecurity, co-funded the development of on-line training material, and named it "Cyber&Data".

Cipher challenges
Since Feb 2013, Buchanan has worked on a range of on-line cipher challenges, and which are free to access and use. The currently supported ciphers within the online challenge include:
 * Graphics-based ciphers: Pigpen, semaphore, Templar, Mary's, Dscript, Voynich, three-square cipher, Monk, and Morse.
 * Substitution code ciphers: ASCII codes, gold bug, Bacon, Dvorak, Atbash, Rot13, ROT47, tap, Baudot, scrambled, homomorphic, Caeser, gray code, Pollux, Fractional, Greek alphabet, Runic, encode, and Navajo.
 * Grid ciphers: ADFGVX, Polybius, Bifid, Straddling, column, SYLLABARY, Porta, columnar transposition, Beaufot, S-box mapping, Delastelle, and Nilist.
 * Key-based ciphers: keyword, OTP, Condi, AMSCO, Vigenère, and Beale.
 * Maths/arithmetic-based cipher: exponential cipher, Diffie-Hellman, multiplication, LZ coding, Huffman, jump, Affine, XOR, GCD (Great Common Divisor), binary multiplication (modulo 2), binary divide (modulo 2), and RSA.
 * Puzzle-based cipher: Sudoku, 3-rail, and NULL.

Along with this, Buchanan developed a range of cipher coders and decoders, and which include the Barbie cipher, Rick Astley, Scytale cipher, Lorem Ipsum Cipher, Delastelle, Citrix CTX1, Lorenz cipher, and Radio cipher (using NATO/Military phonetic alphabet content encoding). The challenges are used within Buchanan's teaching as an introduction to Applied Cryptography.

Cryptography doodles
Buchanan uses a number of teaching style in the teaching of cybersecurity, network security and cryptography. This includes using podcasts, YouTube videos for formal lectures, and practical demonstrations. As part of the teaching of Applied Cryptography and Trust module for an MSc class, he has used a Doodle method of the teaching a range of topics, such as for Cipher Fundamentals, Symmetric Key Encryption, and Hashing methods.

Invited talks and engagements
Over the years Buchanan has presented at many events, and has a reputation for high impact, fun and engaging presentations. This has included live demonstrations of cyber security threats. With a documentary on Cyber Security, broadcast on Monday 8 November 2015, Buchanan and his team set up a fake Web site for hackers to gain access to, as part of the BBC Panorama programme. In 2016, Buchanan was also included in the FutureScot list for the "50 Scottish Tech People Who Are Changing The World".

Laureations for honorary doctorates
On 21 June 2012, Buchanan presented a laureation for Prof John Howie in the award of an honorary doctorate. Also, on 21 June 2012, Buchanan presented a laureation for Steven Cordiner for a Doctor of Technology and outlined, "Steve has been a leading proponent and visionary for optimization within the oil and gas industry, especially in promoting savings in CO2 emissions before it became a world-wide issue."

Innovation events
Buchanan has organised conferences and symposiums which focus on innovation. On 12 January 2023, he organised the, "Symposium on Technology Innovation and Collaboration" at the Merchiston Campus at Edinburgh Napier University. It included invited talks from the spin-outs Buchanan was involved with, including from Bruce Ramsay (Cyacomb), Dr Jamie Graves (Zonefox) and Dr Pavlos Papadopoulos.

The Cyber Academy
Buchanan launched The Cyber Academy at Edinburgh Napier University on 5 May 2015, with a goal of "bringing together industry professionals, law enforcement and academics with a view to combining strengths to combat the growing threat of criminal use of hacking software to steal money, data and intellectual property." Its base was the EU-funded Dynamic Forensics Evaluation and Training (DFET) project, and which developed a cloud-based cybercrime training environments to support authorities, businesses and citizens in the fight against cyber crime.

On 15 January 2019, it hosted the "Innovation in Cyber Conference: Building The Next Great Cybersecurity Company" event on the Merchison Campus at Edinburgh Napier University, and which included talks from Dr Jamie Graves (founder of Zonefox), Federico Charosky (founder of Quorum Cyber), David Stubley (founder of 7Elements) and Susan Brown (founder of Zortrex).

From 4–5 June 2019, The Cyber Academy held its 5th "International Conference on Big Data in Cybersecurity" event. Speakers included Prof Steven Furrnell, and Prof Sokratis Katsikas, and Kate Forbes.

After a break over the COVID-19 pandemic, the Big Data conference returned on 11 May 2023, with the "6th International Conference on Big Data, Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure", and was opened by Robert Aldridge (the Rt. Hon. Lord Provost and Lord Lieutenant of the City of Edinburgh). It included talks from Prof Berk Canberk on "Digital Twins in cybersecurity, infrastructure and 6G applications" and a keynote talk from Becky Pinkard. Buchanan gave the endnote talk at the end on "Future Risks of the Cyber Age".

In Jun 2019, it hosted a talk on "The Future of Money" by Andreas M.Antonopoulos. On 4 September 2019, The Cyber Academy hosted the 2nd International Conference on Blockchain, Identity and Cryptography, and which included a keynote talk from Professor Serguei Popov. The last conference to be run by The Cyber Academy that was run before the COVID-19 lock-down was the 2nd Blockchain International Scientific Conference and which was co-hosted by the British Blockchain Association. It was held on 11 March 2020 at the Craiglochart Conference of Edinburgh Napier University.

Another theme of work of The Cyber Academy is around career events for Cybersecurity, and have hosted several events in collaboration with CiiSec. On 23 Nov 2017, the IISP hosted a career event with the support of Buchanan and Rich Macfarlane. Then, in Feb 2020, Amanda Finch, the CEO of CiiSec (which had previously been known as the IISP), opened up the CiiSec careers event at the Merchiston Campus. This collaboration has continued over the years, and, The Cyber Academy hosted CiiSec 2022 on 7 September 2022, and which had an overaching theme of "inspiring the next generation of cybersecurity professionals'". David Ferbrache OBE presenting the opening keynote talk, and Buchanan presented on endnote talk on "The Risks and Opportunities of AI".

Awards and recognition
Buchanan's awards and recent recognition includes:
 * In 2003, Finalist for KTP of the Year Award with Seven Layer Communications.
 * In 2004, Winner of the KTP of the Year Award and Grade 1 Certificate of Excellence from Innovate UK with Cànan Ltd.
 * In 2015, named in the "50 most influential UK higher education professionals on social media".
 * In 2015, led a cipher cracking team to win the Universally Challenged competition.
 * In 2016, awarded "Cyber Evangelist of the Year" at the first Scottish Cybersecurity awards, along with leading a project that was awarded the best collaborative project with Police Scotland.
 * In 2016, gave a keynote talk on Cybersecurity at SISCA DEMOfest 2016.
 * In 2016, included in "The Digital List: 50 people from various areas of Scotland's technology industries who are changing the world".
 * In 2017, appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to cyber security, and was the first person to receive an OBE related to cyber security.
 * From 2017 to 2021, appointed Chief Editor of the Journal of Cybersecurity Technology.
 * In 2018, received an "Outstanding Contribution to Knowledge Exchange" award at the Scottish Knowledge Exchange awards.
 * In 2018, appointed co-chair on Technical Committee for IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society (SMC) on Blockchain.
 * In 2018, became a member of the IOTA Research Council.
 * In 2019, presented a keynote talk at the 5th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy (ICISSP).
 * In 2019, awarded an Honorary Professorship from Spoleczna Akademia Nauk.
 * In 2019, awarded best Best Lecturer/Tutor in the School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University within the student-nominated excellence awards.
 * From 2020, served as co-Chief Editor of Blockchain in Health Today.
 * In 2020, awarded best Best Lecturer/Tutor in the School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University within the student-nominated excellence awards.
 * In 2020, Advanced Risk Modelling for Early Detection (ARMED) product won the 'Innovation of the Year' award at Scottish Knowledge Exchange Awards (with CM200 and Adrian Smales).
 * In 2021, presented a keynote talk at the 14th International Conference on Security of Information and Networks.
 * In 2021, winner of the Best Paper Award at 14th International Conference on Security of Information and Networks for the paper entitled, "PAN-DOMAIN: Privacy-preserving Sharing and Auditing of Infection Identifier Matching".
 * In 2022, the EU-funded GLASS project won the Leading Light Innovation Award at the Scottish Cyber Awards, of which he is the principal investigator (PI) for the project.
 * In 2022, presented a keynote at talk entitled "The Future of Cryptography, Blockchain and Trust" at International Blockchain Summit Istanbul, 2022.
 * In 2022, presented a keynote talk at Cyber Security 2023 in Cardiff.
 * In 2023, appointed to the advisory board of the Zero Trust Special Interest Group.
 * In 2023, awarded best Best Lecturer/Tutor in the School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University within the student-nominated excellence awards.
 * In 2023, appointed the co-chair for Blockchain & FinTech within IEEE Blockchain Technical Community (BCTC).
 * In 2023, presented a keynote a ScotSecure West (Glasgow) and Borderless Cyber (London).
 * In 2023, presented a keynote on "The Greatest Threat to the Internet: Quantum Computers" at #RISK in the ExCel, London.
 * In 2023, appointed to the Bank of England CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) Academic Advisory Group (AAG). In 2023, received the "Most Innovative Teacher of the Year" award at the Times Higher Education Awards 2023.
 * In 2024, present an endnote talk on "AI and Cybersecurity" at Future Scotland's Cybersecurity 2024 event in Glasgow.
 * In 2024, elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE).