[7] His PhD thesis was on applications of digital computers to the automatic classification and retrieval of documents.

His Needham–Schroeder (co-invented with Michael Schroeder) security protocol forms the basis of the Kerberos authentication and key exchange system.

[14] The European Conference on Computer Systems (EuroSys)[15] established the annual Roger Needham PhD Award.

[16] It awards €2,000 to a PhD student from a European university whose thesis is regarded to be an exceptional, innovative contribution to knowledge in the computer systems area.

Past winners have been: Needham married fellow computer scientist Karen Spärck Jones in 1958.