William Buchanan(born 6 March 1961) is a Scottish computer scientist. Buchanan was born in Falkirk, Scotland in 1961. He currently leads the Centre for Distributed Computing and Security at Edinburgh Napier University. He is a Professor in the School of Computing.
Buchanan was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to cyber security, and was the first person to receive an OBE related to cyber security. In 2018, he received an "Outstanding Contribution to Knowledge Exchange" award at the Scottish Knowledge Exchange awards.
With a documentary on Cyber Security, broadcast on Monday 8 November 2015, Buchanan and his team set up a fake Web site for hackers to gain access to, as part of the BBC Panorama programme.