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| Photo: InfoLab21 |
Experts from academia and industry shared knowledge about how to keep UK businesses safe from cyber threats at a Cyber-Security Challenge event held at Lancaster University recently.
According to a BBC news report last week, UK businesses lose around £21bn a year to cybercrime and cyber-attacks are becoming increasingly more sophisticated – and the government is issuing advice to British business leaders on how to protect themselves from cyber threats.
Lancaster University’s Security Lancaster,
the only organisation in the north of England and Scotland and one of
only eight in the UK to be recognised by government and awarded Academic
Cyber Security Centre of Excellence Status, fully recognises the need
to create a more security-conscious culture.
More than 85
delegates attended the cyber-security conference ‘protecting your
business in an insecure world’ which set out to raise awareness of
potential threats and help businesses make informed choices about how
they protect themselves.
Security Lancaster and InfoLab21
Lancaster University’s Information Communications Technologies Centre of
Excellence hosted the event in partnership with the ICT Knowledge
Transfer Network (ICT TKN).
According to speakers at the conference some of the top threats to a business include:
- data loss – whether it is your own data, or your customers’, the repercussions can be far reaching
- new technology – be aware that people will not always use new technology for the purposes the designer intended
- internal
threats – not all cyber security attacks come from outside a business.
Ex-employees or those suspended from duties can pose a real security
risk if they are not managed quickly and effectively - mobile
computing – data is increasingly likely to be stored on mobile devices
from laptops to mobile phones rather than in an office on a desktop
computer - social networking – many businesses depend upon it.
However, with all these benefits come risks, as first-generation
security solutions are failing to stop the invasion of new and
sophisticated threats
“Cyber security is
not a bolt on to businesses but an important part of it,” argues Dr Daniel Prince, Associate Director of
Security Lancaster and Partnerships Manager, “which should be
embedded into your business model and business processes.”
“It is a very difficult financial climate
for SMEs in the UK, and they need to counter cyber threat to ensure
they operate at maximum effectiveness and retain valuable intellectual
property and assets,” added Tony
Dyhouse from the ICT KTN.
“At the same time, their need to focus on core
business limits the resource they have to gain an understanding of the
threat and how to protect themselves. This conference imparts such
information with maximum effectiveness in the minimum time, providing
recommendations from cyber experts on hand.”
The event was
supported by InfoLab21 as one of a series of Northwest technology events
as part of the InfoLab21 Strategic Technology Exploitation Programme
(ISTEP), a Solutions for Business product which provides a range
knowledge exchange activities to identify and support collaboration
between Northwest Digital & Creative companies and the 270+ strong
research community at InfoLab21.
Attendees were all also asked
about what assistance they would find most useful to protect their
organisation and the findings will be reviewed in detail in a subsequent
workshop and publicised as a industry report later on this year.
• Catch the conference online. Videos of the presentations and interviews from CSC2012 are now online and can be viewed on the conference website and on YouTube. You can also have a look at the photographs on Flickr or on Facebook.