Sector Spotlight: Major Incidents & Cyber Security – Protecting our Universities

High-profile incidents are very keenly felt in the Higher Education (HE) sector. With their huge intake of students and high-profile academic work, universities are uniquely exposed to many burgeoning risks in cyber and other areas of IT operation. In this Sector Spotlight, we focus on cyber and other potential sources of major incidents and consider the best ways to protect our leading educational institutions going forward.

Whichever industry you work in, why not join us to hear about Major Incident Management (MIM) and the state of cyber security from senior leaders in the HE sector? With presentations from University of Oxford on their new approach to MIM and Northumbria University on their response to a major cyber outage, plus an introduction to the topic from CSI and cyber research results from OpenText, we hope you can join us and share your thoughts in our closing discussion.

Agenda

Introduction – Mark Temple, University of Glasgow

Major incidents in HE and how to prepare for the unexpected

Andy Dunn and Kevin O’Brien, CSI

Preparing for the unexpected – whether caused by a technical issue, a human error, or a cyber attack – involves a whole host of essential elements, from monitoring and business continuity to rapid response & remediation, data resilience and more.  This session sets the scene for anticipating and managing major disruptions to service in the higher education world.

Major incident management – changing the culture

Andrew Dixon and Ian Teasdale, University of Oxford

In 2015, University of Oxford IT Services was operating in a culture of reactive major incident management, bouncing from one major incident to the next on an almost monthly basis.  Over a period of less than five years, this situation was transformed.  The presentation will reflect on the journey, on planning, continual improvement and will touch on business continuity in the pandemic and beyond.

Northumbria cyber attack – lessons from managing a major incident

Simon Corbett, Northumbria University

In August 2020 Northumbria University suffered a major cyber-attack causing significant disruption to the staff, students and researchers of the University.  From the experiences of the incident at Northumbria, the presentation will discuss what it is really like to be in the middle of a cyberattack, the questions IT leaders will ask and be asked, and reflecting back, some of the lessons learned.

The state of cyber security in higher education

Mick Rutherford, OpenText

This session talks about some recent research on cyber security in HE, presenting the findings of extensive discussions with service managers at universities across the country.

Are you prepared for the unexpected?

Discussion led by Mark Temple of the University of Glasgow

Delivery Platform

This online event will be delivered using the Zoom platform.

How much does it cost?

Places are available to itSMF UK members and non-members for FREE.

BOOK YOUR PLACE

This event is sponsored by