Aston University’s Victor Chang wins Cybersecurity Professional of the Year 2026

By AI, Created 9:57 AM UTC, May 20, 2026, /AGP/ – Professor Victor Chang of Aston University has been named Cybersecurity Professional of the Year 2026 by the Cyber Security Awards. The honor lands amid a broader run of awards and active projects that put his privacy-preserving AI and federated learning work into hospitals, factories, finance and public-sector systems.

Why it matters: - The award spotlights cybersecurity work built for regulated environments where raw data cannot be freely shared. - Chang’s research focuses on systems that can move threat intelligence across institutions without exposing sensitive records. - The recognition adds external validation to a portfolio already being used in real deployments.

What happened: - Professor Victor Chang, Professor of Business Analytics at Aston Business School, Aston University, was named Cybersecurity Professional of the Year 2026 by Cyber Security Awards. - The Cyber Security Awards is a global competition that recognises outstanding contribution to the field. - The announcement was dated May 4, 2026.

The details: - Chang’s self-developed FedAvgVChang architecture is a federated learning system for intrusion detection. - The system was developed and validated over several years, including collaboration with the University of Tokyo through the UK Government’s International Science Partnerships Fund. - FedAvgVChang trains detection models locally across distributed devices, so security knowledge can spread without sensitive data leaving its source. - Results presented at the IEEE CyberSciTech/DASC/PICom/CBDCom 2025 conference in Hakodate, Japan, showed 97% detection accuracy on industrial benchmarks. - The same results showed full threat-analysis cycles completing in under a second on low-cost edge hardware. - Chang’s earlier Deep-IFS intrusion detection system remains active across data centres in England, Taiwan and Singapore. - Chang’s Cloud Computing Adoption Framework contributed to the evidence base for national guidance on sovereign AI security. - Innovate UK-funded projects are extending the work into NHS clinical infrastructure, financial institutions and public-sector AI governance. - Chang said: “Privacy and security are not constraints on what AI can do. They are the engineering conditions that allow AI to operate where it is most needed — in hospitals, on factory floors, inside financial systems, across public networks.”

Between the lines: - The award sequence points to growing recognition for applied AI and cybersecurity research that is moving beyond academic publishing. - Chang is also being positioned as a bridge between research and operational deployment, with systems already running in live environments. - The focus on sovereign AI security reflects rising concern about how institutions protect data while still improving defensive capabilities.

What’s next: - Active funded projects in 2026 include the UK–Japan AI-Driven Malware Detection programme, the Sovereign AI Security initiative with NHS and SME partners, and a Quantum-Enhanced Transport Security project. - Those projects are intended to extend the same design approach into additional regulated sectors and infrastructure. - Chang’s ongoing work is likely to stay centered on privacy-preserving AI, federated learning and cybersecurity systems built for operational use.

The bottom line: - Chang’s latest award underscores a broader trend in cybersecurity: the most valuable tools are increasingly the ones that work inside tight legal, clinical and industrial constraints without sacrificing performance.

More information: Aston University research profile, Computing AI Leadership Index 2026, Cyber Security Awards