Back to Lecturers and Associates

Assistant Professor Nikola Protrka

Nikola Protrka, PhD, joined the Croatian Police service in 1998. As a national expert on Cybercrime, he worked in most investigative areas related to Cybercrime from computer fraud, ransomware, DDOS attacks, digital evidence, computer forensics and data protection. With both an operational and strategic police background and over 25 years of training and development experience his passion is Cyber Intelligence/Surveillance/Defence, operational risk and business continuity related issues and learning to improve performance, employee awareness and professionalism. He is an experienced training manager and facilitator with a reputation for producing a positive and productive learning environment, with national and international experience at both the strategic and operational levels. Dr Protrka's doctoral thesis is entitled "International Cooperation and Security in Combating Crime in Cyberspace". Thesis is based on the different perceptions of international co-operation in cyberspace and the security threatened by the crime of this domain. Dr Protrka has explored and analysed the current state of cyberspace as well as the cybersecurity endangered by the fact of various criminal offenses in cyberspace. As a guest lecturer, he participates in classes at the University of Zagreb - Faculty of Law, Information Systems Law, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, Computer Forensics. He teaches the course Security, Privacy and Ethics of Digital Data at the Algebra University. Dr Protrka is a serving Police officer. He became a professor at the Police Academy Zagreb in 2011 and represented Croatian Ministry of the Interior internationally, designing and delivering training on various topics related to digital evidence, computer forensics, cybercrime etc. He has considerable operational experience in criminal investigations and he is a member of European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Training - CEPOL. Dr Protrka is recognised expert included in various EU projects like Twinning project "Providing support in the implementation of the modernized legislative framework for personal data protection in the Republic of North Macedonia" in cooperation with German Foundation for International Legal Cooperation – IRZ, and Network and Information Security Expert at European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) in Athens, Greece. Dr Protrka is an expert witness for IT with more than 20 years of experience at court cases. An overview of published papers can be seen at the Croatian scientific bibliography - CROSBI.