Cumulative Revelations in Personal Data takes a multidisciplinary approach to investigating how small, apparently innocuous pieces of employees' personal information, which are generated through interactions with/in networked systems over time, collectively pose significant yet unanticipated risk to personal reputation and employers' operational security. Such cumulative revelations come from personal data that are shared intentionally by an individual, from data shared about an individual by others, from recognition software that identifies and tags people and places automatically, and from common cross-authentication practices that favour convenience over security (e.g. signing into AirBnB via Facebook). Brought together, these data can provide unintended insights to others into (for example) an individual's personal habits, work patterns, personality, emotion, and social influence. Collectively these data thus have the potential to create adverse consequences for that individual (e.g. through reputational damage), their employer (e.g. by creating opportunities for cybercrime), and even for national security. The research brings together multidisciplinary expertise in Socio-Digital Interaction, Co-design, Interactive Information Retrieval, and Computational Legal Theory, all working in collaboration with a key industry partner, the Royal Bank of Scotland, which employs more than 92,000 staff across 12 national, international and private banks and for which security concerns are paramount, as well as UK Government security agencies, via the Government Office for Science and the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats. The research will examine the potential adverse revelations delivered by an individual employee's holistic digital footprint through the development of a prototype software tool that maps out a portrait of a user's digital footprint and reflects it back to them. This tool will enable individuals to understand the cumulative nature of their personal data, and better comprehend the associated vulnerabilities and risks. Responding to employers' concerns over organisational security risks created by cumulative revelations of their employees' data, the research will also identify conflicts and ambiguities in security service design and implementation when the motivations and actions of individual employees are balanced against organisational security philosophy, enabling mitigation against the attendant risks, issues and consequences of cumulative revelations from organisational and individual perspectives.

Cumulative Revelations in Personal Data takes a multidisciplinary approach to investigating how small, apparently innocuous pieces of employees' personal information, which are generated through interactions with/in networked systems over time, collectively pose significant yet unanticipated risk to personal reputation and employers' operational security. Such cumulative revelations come from personal data that are shared intentionally by an individual, from data shared about an individual by others, from recognition software that identifies and tags people and places automatically, and from common cross-authentication practices that favour convenience over security (e.g. signing into AirBnB via Facebook). Brought together, these data can provide unintended insights to others into (for example) an individual's personal habits, work patterns, personality, emotion, and social influence. Collectively these data thus have the potential to create adverse consequences for that individual (e.g. through reputational damage), their employer (e.g. by creating opportunities for cybercrime), and even for national security. The research brings together multidisciplinary expertise in Socio-Digital Interaction, Co-design, Interactive Information Retrieval, and Computational Legal Theory, all working in collaboration with a key industry partner, the Royal Bank of Scotland, which employs more than 92,000 staff across 12 national, international and private banks and for which security concerns are paramount, as well as UK Government security agencies, via the Government Office for Science and the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats. The research will examine the potential adverse revelations delivered by an individual employee's holistic digital footprint through the development of a prototype software tool that maps out a portrait of a user's digital footprint and reflects it back to them. This tool will enable individuals to understand the cumulative nature of their personal data, and better comprehend the associated vulnerabilities and risks. Responding to employers' concerns over organisational security risks created by cumulative revelations of their employees' data, the research will also identify conflicts and ambiguities in security service design and implementation when the motivations and actions of individual employees are balanced against organisational security philosophy, enabling mitigation against the attendant risks, issues and consequences of cumulative revelations from organisational and individual perspectives.

Each year, criminals steal an estimated £280 Billion of secret information. These crimes are hidden, with the perpetrators potentially thousands of miles away. Where does this crime happen? In the cyber world. Cyber criminals target valuable company assets, as they hack computers and bypass security systems to steal confidential business information, prototype designs, strategic bid information and customer lists. These assets are collectively known as trade secrets, as they derive their value from their secrecy. When this theft is done to benefit foreign countries, it is known as economic espionage. Concerned governments and companies are effecting important changes to combat this problem. Yet, despite the huge economic impact of these thefts, very little is known about them. This research seeks to address this lack of knowledge by investigating data on the theft of trade secrets to understand their economic impact. Using a unique source of data, this research examines what is actually happening in cybercrime. Analysis of information from court cases generates a systematic understanding of what is stolen, who the criminals are, and how this affects victims and the economy as a whole. By definition, the stolen trade secrets are secret, and therefore very difficult to investigate. This project uses the rare insights and information found in court cases to tease out a better understanding of this cybercrime. Over the course of this project, a team of researchers will collect and analyse court data. The researchers will use statistical and other analytical techniques to create a robust understanding of trade secret theft and its implications. These findings will be publicised using conferences, seminars, academic papers and social media, so that groups and individuals interested in these topics can engage with this project and the research team. This research will benefit businesses, policy makers, researchers and the general public. Businesses will have a better understanding of the value of their trade secrets and how best to protect them. Policy makers will be able to develop better policy as the project will generate evidence to ground economic insights and objective analysis into action. These improved policies, which create mechanisms to protect assets, will benefit the economy as a whole, as law and policy will be better tailored to the actual, as opposed to our current theoretical, situation. Researchers and innovators, from the fashion designer working on their next collection, to the aerospace engineer developing a new aeroplane, will be able to better protect their valuable prototypes, software programs and other trade secrets. Researchers who focus on cyber security and trade secrets themselves, will have improved insights leading to better cyber security systems designs, data to test social policy and estimates of the value of trade secrets. Legal scholars will have access to a rich source of information to combine empirical analysis with theoretical approaches. Finally, the general public will benefit from enhanced security and improved policy environment. Improved cyber security means better protection of personal data. The policies informed by this research will encourage innovation. Innovation improves lives, as we enjoy new fashions, advanced aeroplanes and new medicines. However, one group is not likely to benefit: the would-be thieves and corporate spies who target trade secrets.

Data-driven innovation is transforming every sector of our digital economy (DE) into a de-centralised marketplace; accommodation (AirBnb), transportation (Uber), logistics (Deliveroo), user-generated vs. broadcast content in the creative industries (YouTube). We are witnessing an inexorable shift from classical models centred upon monolithic institutions, to a dynamic and decentralised economy in which anyone is a potential producer and consumer. A gig economy, underpinned by digital products and services co-created through shorter-lived, diverse peer-to-peer engagements. Yet, the platforms that enable this DE are increasingly built on centralised architectures. These are not controlled by society, but by large organisations making commercial decisions far from the social contexts they affect. There is an urgent need to disrupt this relationship, to deliver proper governance that empowers society to take control of the DE and enables people to assert greater agency over the vast centralised silos of data that drive these platforms. We stand on the cusp of a second wave of DE disruption, driven by bleeding edge data-driven technologies (AI) and secure, distributed data sharing infrastructures such as Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT), in which data is no longer siloed but becomes a fluid, de-centralised commodity shifting power away from tech giants to individuals and de-centralised organisations. This future Decentralised Digital Economy (DDE) enables people and organisations to work together, to trade, and ultimately to trust via frictionless digital interactions free from reliance upon centralised third parties, but often with reliance upon autonomous services. This shift in agency and power is a game changing opportunity for society to take back control over its digital economy - but we have a limited window of opportunity to get it right. We have already witnessed de-centralisation in the financial sector, where the lack of regulation and clear governance of crypto-currencies has proven a double-edged sword, allowing free exchange of value across the globe, but that is coupled with fraudulent company flotations and currency rates rigged by large mining pools. This is a consequence of technology-driven innovation unchecked by socio-economic insight; a lack of knowledge making policy makers impotent in the face of the tech giants. We are now at the tipping point of similar wide-sweeping disruption across all sectors in the DDE, a transformation that will radically redefine our models of value and how it is created, the ways in which we work, and how we use and extract value from our data. DECaDE represents a critical and timely opportunity to shape this emerging de-centralised digital economy (DDE), to develop insights that define a new 21st century model of work and value creation in the DDE, and ensure a prosperous, safe and inclusive society for all. DECaDE is a 60 month centre, comprising 21 people and building upon over 8.6 million pounds of feasibility scale UKRI/EPSRC investments in DLT and Human Data Interaction (HDI) held by the proposing team. DECaDE is a three-way partnership between the Universities of Surrey and Edinburgh, and the Digital Catapult DLT Field Labs. The latter is a full member of the consortium, through which we have co-created this research programme and with whom we will engage in further co-creation of the future DDE through diverse end-users in the public and private sector to support the competitive position of the UK