Liping Zhang received the Ph.D. degree in information security from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2009. She is Associate Professor of Information Security at China University of Geosciences. Her research interests include key management and distribution, VoIP communications security, and network security. Dr Zhang has published over 30 research papers, most of which are refereed international journal papers including IEEE/ACM/IET journal papers. Dr Zhang is the principal grant holder of three externally funded research projects.