Prof Rossouw von Solms

 

Emeritus Professor

Centre for Research in Information and Cyber Security (CRICS)

Rossouw.vonsolms@mandela.ac.za

North Campus


Biography / Background

Professor Rossouw von Solms is an emeritus professor from Nelson Mandela University. At the time of retirement, Rossouw was also a Distinguished Professor at the university. Prior to retirement, he was the Director of the Centre for Research in Information and Cyber Security (CRICS) at Nelson Mandela University, and prior to this position, he. headed the Department of Information Technology for more than 17 years.

Qualifications

He holds a Ph.D. from the former Rand Afrikaans University (RAU), having received an MSc from RAU, BSc (Hons) from UNISA and a BSc and HDE from the former University of Port Elizabeth. Rossouw also holds a Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) certification.

Professional Activities

He is a past-president of the South African Institute of Computer Science and Information Technology (SAICSIT) and has been a board member for a number of years. Rossouw has been editor or co-editor of nine conference proceedings, have edited or co-edited ten technical reports and serve, or served, on the editorial board and review panel of several conferences and journals, including Computers & Security and Information & Computer Security.

Supervision

He has successfully supervised 67 students to a Master’s (50) and Doctoral (17) degrees.



Research Interests

Rossouw has researched the fields of information and cybersecurity, as well as IT governance, over a period more than thirty years.
 

Cybersecurity has become a matter of global interest and importance. The Whitehouse (2011) outlined a cyber-strategy which not only provides the stance of the United States of America (USA) on cyber-related issues but which also provides a unified approach towards the USA’s engagement with other countries regarding cyber issues. The United Kingdom (UK) lists cybersecurity as a top priority and committed £650m over four years for a transformative National Cyber Security Programme (Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, 2011).

Information and cybersecurity have become critical to any government, enterprise as well as individual today. are dependent on critical information and cyber services and infrastructure. Similarly, any enterprise gathers, stores, process and transmit valuable and sometimes confidential and private information. From a personal perspective, all of us holds and uses critical information, like user-IDs and passwords, bank and credit card numbers and access codes, etc.

All these information sources and cyber infrastructures need to be protected. Information and cybersecurity is thus a discipline that continues to protect all of this valuable information and cyber resources and assets, throughout all the technical developments in the information and cyber technologies. The research foci of

Rossouw’s research were mostly on the human and management aspects of information and cybersecurity.

List of Publications

He has published and presented more than 220 peer-reviewed research papers. His academic work attracted more than 8000 citations to date (July 2020). Most of these papers were published and presented in the field of Information and Cyber Security as well as IT Governance,


Awards and Achievements

  • Rossouw is a rated researcher by the National Research Foundation (NRF) since 1995 and is currently in his third cycle as a B-rated researcher.
  • Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust research award for senior Technikon staff in 1995.
  • Four years later – in 1999 - he received a Literati Award for Excellence from the MCB University Press for a series of articles published in the journal Information Management & Computer Security on information security management.
  • In 2001 he received an IFIP Silver Core Award from IFIP for outstanding services over a long period.
  • In 2003 he was named the Computer Society of South Africa (CSSA), Eastern Cape Chapter, ICT Person of the Year
  • Distinguished Service in ICT Award from the Institute of IT Professionals in South Africa (IITPSA) – November 2019.