| Date | Category |
|---|---|
| 20th September 2021 | Blog |
On the 14th of September, UKUPC held the first webinar on Cyber Security as part of a planned series of events. Three expert speakers shared their knowledge and experience of cyber attacks, along with their advice on mitigating and managing risk. Thank you to those who were able to attend.
The session was recorded which we are pleased to be able to share with you via YouTube. Please do circulate this to colleagues in your institution who may find it useful; we know this is not just an IT problem, so consider governance, HR, procurement and finance partners.
We asked each of our panellists what their one piece of advice they wanted delegates to take away should be:
- Steve Kennett, Executive director, e-infrastructure and senior information risk owner at Jisc, advised: Don’t panic! Understand the risk to your organisation, be prepared and know who to contact. Talk to your technical team regularly. In the event of an attack – don’t forget your people, they will need your support.
- Phil Webster Executive Director of Gallagher advised: Contextualise your risk. Cyber and data protection insurance is often referenced as nice to have but it shouldn’t be a last thought; Risk profiles have changed and costs have changed, so procurement needs to start the conversation early with a good insurance buying strategy. Start with a clean piece of paper, link in with your risk register, and match your requirements with that. Also, use your broker, there are a huge range of policies out there, a broker will help you identify the good from the bad.
- James Rockliffe, Director of Procurement at LSBU, advised: Keep talking but listen well! This is no longer a mythical issue, there are persons throughout the country who sadly now have hard experience on this. Liaise with a really broad range of people, your colleagues, peers, purchasing consortia working groups and those who have been through this, there is a lot to learn.
We promised some resources too:
Jisc holds a wide range of information on its dedicated cyber security pages. Also, they share excellent insight into the cyber security landscape in HE and FE in a dedicated survey response document.
The National Cyber Security Centre has a wealth of useful information and advice on gaining buy-in, incident response plans and policy.
Last but not least, from Gallagher, you can read their State of the Market document on Cyber & Data Protection Insurance which provides a neat summary of the challenges in the market and some potential solutions in approach.
Upcoming UKUPC Events
The next UKUPC event takes place on Thursday 25th November 2021 at 10.00 am and will cover Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in procurement. We will be in touch with more information as soon as we have it.
