Year 2 Student - 2025 Cohort - Cohort 7

Nikki earned her bachelor's degree in Mathematics, which she initially used to work as a market researcher. She later pursued a Juris Doctor degree and spent nearly a decade serving as a court attorney. In practice, she saw how legacy systems and organisational inertia expose institutions and individuals to cyber risk, and how victims of online harms often face limited legal recourse. Motivated to bridge the widening gap between law and technology, Nikki completed a double master’s degree in International Commercial and Trade Law and Commerce majoring in Business Analytics. She recently joined the CDT to integrate her interdisciplinary background and explore how legal, analytical, and technical insights can be leveraged to find ways to help make cyberspace safer for all. She is currently building her technical foundation and exploring potential research directions.

Beyond Detection: Responsibility Gaps at the Payment-Stage of UK-Reported Cyber-Enabled Fraud

Cyber-enabled fraud in which people are deceived into sending money themselves remains one of the most common form of fraud in the UK. While mandatory reimbursement has been in force since October 2024, reimbursement only settles who bears the loss. Tracing, recovery, investigation, and referral of cases remain dispersed across banks, payment bodies, regulators, and law enforcement. When a case stalls after it is reported, existing records cannot show whether no organisation had the duty, capacity or route to act (a true gap), or whether several actors held partial, misaligned duties but none owned the case (crowded non-ownership). This study will reconstruct how individual cases move through this payment-response stage, using public records such as Financial Ombudsman Service decisions. It will map each organisation’s responsibilities, model the chain using law and economics, and test the model through interviews and a workshop with practitioners and victim-support organisations. The aim is to enable regulators and institutions to distinguish the two failures, so that responsibility and liability can be effectively reallocated.

2026 European Cybersecurity PhD Accelerator (https://virtual-routes.org/european-cybersecurity-phd-accelerator/)

Industry Placement - Royal United Services Institute (July to August 2026)

Academic Placement with Professor Adam Joinson and Dr Joanna Syrda (May 2026)

linkedin.com/in/nikki-bellosillo