Who runs this website?

Me, Sergi Bray. I hold a Bachelor’s from Oxford (The Queen’s College) in Classics (yeah, Ancient Greek and Latin), a Master’s in Computer Science from UCL and soon enough my PhD in Cybersecurity from UCL. My PhD covers deepfake harms, and laid the foundation for what would become DefyAbuse.

I am not affiliated with any outside companies or institutions; everything on this website is my own work.

The advice rendered on this website should not be taken as legal advice; always consult a professional.

The content of this website is intended as general recommendation and should not be expected to cover every circumstance; use common sense and think things through. If you have any doubt, as above: consult a professional.

Why have you made this website?

During the first year of my doctorate we were tasked with conducting a Systematic Literature Review on a given topic. In the language of mortals, this means we were told to go away and trawl through literally as much relevant literature as we could find in the online libraries of journal articles, with a certain question in mind. My group’s focus was on “Cybersecurity Behaviour Change Interventions”, which meant we were trying to find effective methods of helping people to take up better cybersecurity practices. We wrote up our findings as a policy briefing, in which the most important part was the following:

After filtering, a very low number of 13 relevant items were eventually found. We were able to gather from these, evidence of good and bad practices. However, it is clear, that there is a lack of research in the domain.

There appeared to be an absurdly large hole in academic literature at large regarding improving cybersecurity behaviour. I could only reason that this is due to the lack of incentives for such literature to exist. Specifically, there was next to no literature on non-corporate cybersecurity: only 4 of the 13 relevant items pertained to helping individuals outside of their function as employees. Here these four are.

Now this is not to say that our SLR looked at all of the relevant literature: we did not (have the time to) do any forward-searching, and so there may be relevant articles cited within these articles. Nor is this at all to say that there are no non-academic cybersecurity improvement guides. There are many, and I have consulted these—from comparison listicles to in-depth documentation—in research for this site as well as for my own cybersafety.

All of this is to say that for as long as I have been looking at computers I have been dissatisfied with the guidance provided on how to use them without unwittingly screwing up my life and the lives of those around me.

I have been doing my very best to fill in that gap with this website, and I will be working on improving it for the foreseeable.

Where do your finances come from?

I have had the somewhat life-altering misfortune that my mother passed away from severe lung cancer; I currently live from a share of her pension, spending more time working on projects like CybSec.Guide than I would be within any regular day job. I am a guilty workaholic and perfectionist, but I am very happy because I have been enabled to do what I love.

My mother’s passing—and her mother’s, shortly after—have had a moral more than a financial impact on myself. I wake up every day feeling the brevity of life, and seeing the sunrise slip through the sieve of time into night. I know my time on this planet is twinklingly finite, and I want to make the most meaningful impression on the world that I can. I will continue to work in near-solitude on projects that can have large and positive global impact, rather than take my skillset and time to a company that operates to further the interests of shareholders.

I have spent the past year building projects that will help the future planet, admittedly sometimes with herculean levels of ambition. I will continue pushing along this journey for as long as I am able. So far the most public of these causes are DefyAbuse, IH8.AI, and CybSec.Guide, but more will come to light in due time.

How can I help?

If you’ve got any suggestions for topics that are missing, or advice you would recommend adding, or even if you just want to express gratitude for this project, you can reach out to me at hi@ih8.ai or team@defyabuse.org :)