Chitra Balakrishna

Program Leader for Cyber Security
Open University

Chitra Balakrishna, Ph.D. MBCS, SFHEA, CEH is an educator, researcher, and author with over 20 years of experience spanning across academia and industry in the areas of cyber security, data networking, mobile communications, technologies, and applications.

She is currently the Program Leader for Cyber Security at Open University and has led the cyber security strand within the government funded Institute of Coding (IoC) project aimed to enhance UK’s digital skills and address the skills gap. She has previously held position of program leader for Networking, Security and Forensics at Edge Hill University and Head of Networks and Services with Centre of Excellence for Mobile Applications and Services at University of South Wales, Cardiff.

Chitra is recently inducted as member of board of trustees at the UK cyber security council cyber security for her contributions to cyber security education, training and its professionalisation. Her work mainly focuses on human aspects of cyber security, and she has been instrumental in acquiring research income of over £2 million as a co-investigator and principal investigator from funding sources such as ERDF, Innovate UK, HEA, EPSRC and British Council.

In her current role, Chitra actively engages with certification providers, accreditation bodies (NCSC) and works quite closely with cyber security academic community within UK (CISSE, UK). She is passionate about changing the way we teach cyber security and in building a sustainable cyber security capability for UK.