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Events Landing PageLecturer & Course Leader BSc Hons Computer Forensics & Security
School of Science & Computing - Dept Computing & Mathematics - Computer Forensics & Security
319 1969 - Main Building
Main Campus
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 Georgetown University in Washington D.C. 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 Portobello College Dublin and at Champlain 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 been awarded national and european research funding.
Conference Organisation
Reviewer for Elsevier Computers and Security Journal
International Conference on Digital Forensics and Cybercrime (ICDF2C) 2020 Technical Programme Committee
Digital Forensics Research Workshop EU (DFRWS EU) 2020 Organising Committee
Digital Forensics Research Workshop EU (DFRWS EU) 2020 Technical Programme Committee
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)
Publications
1. 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
2. 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
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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, September 2020.
7. 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
8. Investigating Kodi Addons (Poster), J Sheppard, 5th Annual Digital Forensics Research Workshop Europe (DFRWS EU 2018), Florence, Italy, March 2018
9. Cloud Evidence Extraction System (Poster), J Sheppard, K K McGlone, 2nd Annual Digital Forensics Research Workshop Europe (DFRWS EU 2018), Dublin, Ireland, March 2015
10. Teaching Forensics through Games – Spam Cluedo, Submitted to Forensics Workshop, University of Sunderland, UK November 2010
11. Growing Rose – An Online Tool Aimed at Reducing Occupational Stress in
Employment, L. Widger, J. Sheppard, J. Cunningham, ICERI2010 Proceedings, p. 7254.
12. 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
13. 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
14. 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
15. 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
16. 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
17. 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
18. 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.)
19. 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.
20. 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
Principal Investigator for Mobile Clinical Information Systems (MICS) January 2012 – July 2013, Awarded by Enterprise Ireland
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
Courses that I currently teach
Introduction to Computer Forensics and Security
File 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
Taught MSc disserstations (several)
Final year degree projects (several)
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
Main Campus Cork Road, Waterford City, 
