Faisal Syafar
Faisal Syafar is a Professor of Information Technology specializing in cybersecurity. He currently serves as a full-time lecturer in the Department of Electronics and Information Technology and as the Director of the Advanced Computing and Information Systems Research Center (AC&ISRC). He is an active member of the global Cisco CTO Forum, the IEEE, and several other international professional communities in the field of information technology. As Cisco’s most senior member of the Technology Leadership Board representing the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, he contributes to shaping global technology strategies and innovation policies. In addition to his academic and industry leadership, he is also actively involved in various external commercial and government technology advisory boards. Before joining Cisco, Professor Faisal held several senior positions with major telecommunications equipment manufacturers, systems integrators, and service providers, including Lucent Telecommunications and Telstra. His professional experience also includes extensive work as a consultant and trainer for numerous leading institutions in Australia, Germany, and Indonesia, focusing on areas such as cybersecurity, innovation, enterprise resource planning (ERP), smart city development, corporate data quality, and telecommunications.
He earned both his Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Information Technology from the University of South Australia. He holds multiple awarded copyrights and patents and has successfully commercialized numerous business-to-business (B2B) enterprise products. Currently, he is pursuing ASEAN and APEC Engineer certifications to further enhance his contribution to professional engineering and technology practices across the region. His research interests encompass cybersecurity, machine learning, mobile technologies, data and information quality, zero trust architecture, and secure IT applications in healthcare and education.
He has been a regular speaker at international conferences, professional IT forums, and industry panels, contributing to global discussions on digital transformation and secure computing. In addition, he serves as an editor for several internationally recognized, high-impact journals and has published extensively in academic journals, book chapters, and conference proceedings on topics related to mobile collaboration, cybersecurity, data integrity, and IT-enabled healthcare innovation.
visits
Special Invited Speaker
ROBOTFORUM 2023
March 13-15, 2023 in Hampton In Tropicana, Las Vegas, USA
UPCOMING EVENTS
IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference
21-24 April 2024, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Invited Speaker
Techno Securiy & Digital Forensic Conference
September 16-18, 2024, in Pasadena, California
Invited Plenary Speaker
International Conference on Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (ICMLAI-2024)
21-23 October, 2024 in Edinburg, UK
Invited Plenary Speaker
IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC) 2027
05-08 Panama City, 2027 in Panama
Invited Speaker
International Conference on Computing and Information Technology
November 02-03, 2026 in San Fransisco, US
Invited Speaker
International Conference on Computer Networks and Security
January, 07-08, 2027, in Singapore, Singapore
Invited Speaker
Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AIME-2027)
July 5-8 2027, in Amsterdam, Netherlands
My Latest Research
The prevalence of infectious diseases with ATD (acute respiratory infection, tuberculosis, and diarrhea) is increasing annually in various regions of Indonesia, including remote and outer areas that lack adequate health, transportation, and telecommunications infrastructure. The information from the Performance Report of the Republic of Indonesia's Ministry of Health's Directorate General of Disease Prevention and Control serves as proof of this. In 2023, the actual achievement for tuberculosis (TB) case finding and treatment was only 36.6% of the targeted 90%. Furthermore, only 3.3% of the target of 30% for the percentage of districts or cities that carry out detection, control of diseases, and health risk factors with the potential for extraordinary events or outbreaks was reached. The scattered nature of technology and information systems used to handle ATD infectious diseases has led to treatment that is not unified or inclusive and does not involve many related agencies or local communities. Therefore, a comprehensive approach is necessary that involves the development of integrated technology and information systems. To address this issue, a technological and national information system framework is required to handle ATD infectious diseases, particularly in remote and outermost areas. Qualitative methods such as surveys related to health services, forum group discussions (FGD) with relevant stakeholders, and geographical mapping of the distribution of health services and technology in the outermost and remote areas of Indonesia will be employed. The ultimate goal of this research is to develop a technology framework and information system for handling ATD infectious diseases in the remote and outermost areas of Indonesia. This research aims to improve health services, increase the capacity of the community and health workers in remote and outer areas, and provide a sense of social justice for these communities through equitable development.
The matter of enhancing capacity has been deliberated in numerous sessions conducted at the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) level. The Council for Security Cooperation in Asia Pacific, in its Memorandum No. 20 titled "Ensuring a Safer Cyber Security Environment," has advised the ARF to adopt capacity building and technical support initiatives. It is advisable to prioritize the enhancement of cybersecurity crisis management in all jurisdictions.
The ASEAN ICT Master Plan 2015, introduced in 2011, establishes a structure for the advancement of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the ASEAN area. The objective of human capacity development is to cultivate proficient and skilled human resources in the field of information and communication technology (ICT). The initiation of the establishment of ICT Skill Standards definition and certification in information system and network security is one of its key projects. ASEAN has additionally formed the ASEAN Network Security Action Council with the aim of creating a standardized structure for network security. This framework hopefully able encompasses initiatives such as enhancing the capabilities and providing security in Asia Pacific region.
At the moment, there isn't an all-encompassing cybersecurity capacity-building program in Asia that can be used across the whole area. Asian countries share similar values, culture, and norms that make it a good fit for building each other's cybersecurity skills, so making an Asian platform for security cooperation is an option to think about. The current programs for building people's skills don't align or work well with the needs of the people in the area who share cultural values and safety concerns. To meet the needs of developing and nurturing expertise and technical know-how in the cybersecurity human capital in the region, we need a comprehensive framework for cybersecurity professional certification. This will allow private-public partnerships, multi-level collaboration, and the creation of a skills pathway for the growth of the cybersecurity industry.
Developing Framework for Cyber Security Capacity Building in Asia Pacific
International Research Grant (Whyte-Australia)
HealthWatch Indonesia: Empowering Remote Communities Through Disease Monitoring and Assessment of ATD (acute respiratory infection, tuberculosis, and diarrhea)
International Research Grant (Knowledge Partnership Platform, Australia-Indonesia)
Community Cyber Resilience in the Age of AI: Co-designing AI-Scam Literacy and Reporting Pathways for Women Entrepreneurs
International Research Grant IRCR
Women entrepreneurs in South Sulawesi increasingly depend on social media, messaging applications, and digital payment systems to sustain micro and small enterprises. Although this digital transition expands market access, customer engagement, and business resilience, it also increases exposure to cyber threats such as phishing, impersonation, fake transfer confirmations, account takeover, and platform-based fraud. The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) further intensifies these risks by enabling more persuasive scam messages, synthetic voice, and manipulated visual content, thereby making deception more scalable, personalized, and difficult to verify.
This project is significant for addressing understudied AI-enabled fraud affecting women micro-entrepreneurs in South Sulawesi, advancing community cyber resilience beyond individual awareness, and extending Activity Theory into informal digital enterprise contexts. It offers both conceptual and methodological innovation while producing practical insights for community organisations, women’s enterprise programs, digital inclusion initiatives, and policymakers promoting safer, more inclusive digital commerce.
It aims to examine how AI-enabled scam risks arise within women’s everyday digital business activity systems, to identify the contradictions that shape scam recognition, response, and reporting, and to co-design practical, locally relevant AI-scam literacy and reporting pathways. The study is informed by Activity Theory, which enables cyber risk to be analysed not as an isolated individual failure, but as a socio-technical phenomenon shaped by tools, rules, communities, and divisions of labour.
Methodologically, the project adopts a qualitative participatory design comprising semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and co-design workshops with women entrepreneurs and community stakeholders. The expected outputs include an AI-Scam Literacy Toolkit, practical transaction verification and incident-response guides, a community-oriented reporting and escalation pathway model, policy recommendations, and internationally publishable scholarly outputs. Expected contributions include practical resources and academic insights on cybersecurity, AI, women’s entrepreneurship, and digital inclusion.
Zero-Trust and Privacy-Preserving AI Framework for Immersive VR Self-Directed Learning in Mild Intellectual Disability: Authentication, Integrity, Auditability
International Research Grant OXFORD
Immersive virtual reality (VR) combined with AI tutors can strengthen self-directed learning for university students with mild intellectual disabilities by providing structured, repeatable, and engaging practice. However, AI+VR learning systems collect highly sensitive behavioural telemetry and depend on continuously delivered VR assets, creating a large attack surface for impersonation, session hijacking, content tampering, and privacy inference. This project is urgent because security failures and privacy breaches can disproportionately harm cognitively vulnerable learners and undermine trust in inclusive education.
The research aims to design and validate an end-to-end Zero-Trust and privacy-preserving framework for AI-assisted immersive VR self-learning, focusing on (i) risk-based adaptive authentication with cognitive-friendly step-up flows, (ii) signed-content integrity for VR assets and prompt templates, and (iii) tamper-evident auditability for verifiable accountability.
Methods include inclusive threat modelling (DFD + STRIDE); implementation of a prototype with Policy Decision/Enforcement Points (PDP/PEP), short-lived scoped tokens, on-device feature extraction with pseudonymisation, signed asset manifests with runtime verification, and hash-chained append-only audit logs; controlled security experiments (token replay, content injection, API abuse, AI-tutor manipulation); and a user study comparing baseline vs proposed systems to quantify security–usability–learning trade-offs.
Expected outputs are a validated reference architecture and prototype, an ethics-compliant feature-level telemetry dataset and attack scenarios, inclusive usable-security design guidelines: architecture with assurance evaluation, or cognitive-friendly adaptive authentication with human-centred evaluation.