Last week, a team from UWEcyber attended the annual NCSC Education Ecosystem conference hosted in Leeds. Ian Johnson (AHOD Cyber Security) and Phil Legg (Professor of Cyber Security) attended as Co-Directors of the UWEcyber Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Education (ACE-CSE), along with Aida Abzhaparova (Senior Lecturer in Cyber Security and Global Politics) and Alan Mills (Lecturer in Cyber Security), who have both led outreach projects through the ACE-CSE this year. Phil Legg also presented an interactive session at the conference along with his external colleagues from Abertay University and the University of Roehampton as part of his ongoing leadership within the CISSEUK initiative to bring greater collaboration between academia, industry and government, and to improve the connectivity of the education pipeline into cyber security.
Alan Mills presented on the ACE-CSE project for upskilling school teachers across the region. This year, we expanded our teacher training initiative to cover six workshops across two locations (UWE Bristol and Gloucestershire College, Cheltenham), to reach a more varied and diverse mix of educators across the South West region. The workshops were specifically structured around three themes: cyber security for young people (for students years 7-9), cyber security basics (for students years 9-11), and cyber security careers and apprenticeships (for students years 11-13). The project has proved to be a success, with excellent feedback from the teachers who attended, and with a number of follow-up collaborations already underway. We continue to work closely with schools across the region, to help both students and teachers alike to upskill in their cyber security knowledge and expertise.
Aida Abzhaparova then presented on the ACE-CSE project for upskilling SMEs across the region. This wa a collaborative project between the cyber security team at UWE, and the DRAGoN team who focus on issues of data governance and privacy – bringing together these two core areas from within UWE to deliver combined workshops. Over two workshops we have helped over 17 SMEs to better understanding cyber security issues, and how they relate to their specific organisation, from construction, to accounting, and even circus skills – the diversity of organisations that chose to attend was fantastic to see! We have also helped to introduce SMEs to the “Five Safes” model developed by DRAGoN as a suitable means of thinking about the access and usage of sensitive data within their organisation.
The conference brings together academia, industry and government, including the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the Department for Education, NCSC and GCHQ, as well as the UK Cyber Security Council and other major stakeholders across UK cyber security.
