Zhejiang University established the Information Security specialization in 2012, and in 2016, it was approved as one of the first institutions to grant doctoral and master's degrees in the first-level discipline of Cyberspace Security. In 2017, the Cyberspace Security Research Center was established, leveraging the strengths of multiple A+ and A-class disciplines at the university to jointly develop a first-class discipline in cyberspace security. In 2019, the School of Cyber Science and Technology was founded, and in the same year, the Cyberspace Security discipline was recognized as one of the seven advantageous and distinctive disciplines at Zhejiang University. In 2020, the Information Security undergraduate program at Zhejiang University was rated as a first-class undergraduate program by the Ministry of Education, and the degree-granting program in Cyberspace Security passed the specialized assessment. In 2021, the undergraduate Information Security program received an A+ rating in the Soft Science professional ranking, ranking first in the country. By 2024, Zhejiang University ranked second globally in the Computer Security and Mobile Computing category of the authoritative CSRankings in the field of computer science over the past three years, and the Cyberspace Security discipline ranked fourth nationally in the Soft Science Best Disciplines ranking in China.

The School has formed a high-level international academic team composed of national high-level talents, AAAS/ACM/CCF/IEEE fellows, national young talents, and overseas academic staff, with an average age of 37, and over 80% holding overseas doctoral degrees. Students trained by the School have achieved remarkable results in renowned competitions both domestically and internationally, such as winning the Defcon CTF global championship (breaking the over-a-decade-long monopoly of CMU), first place in the iDash international competition, first place globally in the HACK@DAC hardware CTF competition, champion in the NeurIPS International AI Security Competition, special prize in the Challenge Cup competition, champion in the Strong Net Cup, and first prize in the Information Security Competition, among others.

The School relies on several national and provincial-level research platforms, including the National Key Laboratory of Blockchain and Data Security, the Cyberspace International Governance Research Base of the Cyberspace Administration of China and the Ministry of Education, the Key Laboratory of New Generation Information Security and Privacy Protection Standardization Technology of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education (Category B), and the Zhejiang Provincial Engineering Research Center for Mobile Terminal Security Technology. It also collaborates with over ten industry-university-research application innovation platforms with institutions such as the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, People's Daily Online, China Unicom, Huawei, Alibaba, and Ant Group, continuously producing high-level scientific research outcomes.

The School has set four key research directions: Data Security and Privacy, Software and Hardware System Security, Artificial Intelligence Security, and Network and Communication Security. In recent years, it has continuously produced high-level scientific research outcomes, leading more than 80 national and provincial-level projects/topics, including the Science and Technology Innovation 2030 major project of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Key R&D Program project, and the high-quality development special project of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. It has won several awards, including the Natural Science First Prize of the Chinese Electronics Society and the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science First Prize, published over 370 CCF-A category papers, received more than 20 best/outstanding paper awards, obtained over 100 international/national patent authorizations, led/participated in the formulation of 30 domestic and international standards, reported over 200 CVE vulnerabilities, and released more than 20 open-source projects and tools. This has formed a virtuous ecological chain of scientific research, talent cultivation, technological innovation, and industrial development.